BY JACK BIDDLE – Part 1 of 2.
Alfred and George.
These photos were cropped from the Thames Cricket Club album.
The past and present – not just what was, but what is.
A&G Price Ltd – A very brief overview of the Thames based company and its founders, Alfred and George Price, who are often referred to as the Men of Metal.
156 years ago, brothers Alfred and George Price, originally from Stroud in Gloucestershire England, opened an engineering works in Onehunga, Auckland. Both brothers had English engineering backgrounds and after their arrival in New Zealand in the mid-1860’s, worked on coastal ships until 1868, when they decided to go it alone and look for ways to put their engineering expertise, vision and imagination to better use.
And so the wheels of A&G Price began to turn and have continued to turn for 156 years. In that time, the company has endured and survived an ever-changing landscape, multiple wars, depressions, labour shortages, competition, pandemics and finding ways to adapt to the changes in direction and bureaucracy by the Government of the day.
What hasn’t changed since 1870 however is the location of their business known by many as simply ‘the foundry’ situated at the northern end of Thames and occupying 10 acres of land, eighty percent of which is taken up by buildings which have also stood the test of time.
The Price brothers and the company’s subsequent owners would soon learn that to survive changing times, reinvention and evolution were going to be vital. 156 years on, that mind-set is very much still in play.
One of the first successful ventures for the brothers, when working from their Onehunga base, was when they saw an opportunity in the flax trade. They went onto design and build many flax processing machines to manufacture rope. Over the next two years, staff numbers grew but the market was tough, so it was time to take a big picture look for where best their expertise and skill could be put to better use.
STARTING IN THAMES
The discovery of gold in Thames was an opportunity not to be missed, and so in 1870, the Thames branch of A&G Price Ltd opened to service the gold mines. In comparison to Auckland’s population of 14,000, the Thames population had at the time swelled to around 18,000 in response to the boom in gold mining and the opportunity and hope for many to earn a fortune by discovering their own pot of gold.
A&G Price was once again in high demand, with a growing reputation for precise engineering.
The mining equipment designed and produced by the foundry included stamping batteries, steam engines, hydraulic lifts, water turbines and boilers. Essentially, if the mining industry needed vital equipment, then A&G Price would design, manufacture and deliver it.
However, Alfred and George would soon learn nothing lasts forever. When the gold dried up and the price of processed flax fell, the brothers had to look to evolve once again.
They moved into the expanding and lucrative timber industry and the new opportunities that would follow, especially close to home in the Thames region.
A production line was soon set up to manufacture a new version of a vital piece of forestry equipment, the timber jack. This was used to move heavy kauri logs in the dense bush. The company would go on to make over 25,000 timber jacks, making them arguably the first mass-produced item in New Zealand alongside the cast-iron coal or wood burning Shacklock Stove.
In 1898 the Thames to Auckland rail opened, so another opportunity beckoned, meaning it was time for the brothers to evolve once again.
Alfred and George lobbied the Government to build steam locomotives and in 1903 they got their first contract for 10 modern locomotives to be built in 30 months. This venture was so successful the company got more rail contracts with manufacturing continuing during World War I with over 200 steam locomotives being produced.
With all this work taking place, a larger furnace was needed, so the biggest Cupola furnace in New Zealand was installed along with a Bessemer converter for making steel. A Cupola furnace is fired on coal and the iron is fed in the top and is helped to melt by a ring of fans. At the time the Bank of New Zealand reportedly had problems with disposing of old government bonds and asked the Price brothers if they could burn them in the furnace. Rumour has it that one day the furnace operator decided to turn on the fans which blew thousands of bank notes and government bonds across Thames.
So the company moved into the 1960s to 1980s which were boom years in New Zealand, with diesel locomotives, hydro stations, sawmills, pulp and paper, cement and steel mills being commissioned. The opportunities were huge and so it was time to evolve once again.
▪ Next issue 17 December – PART 2 ‘Men of Metal’.
