NADALEEN SINGH

What was once four walls and tech­ni­cal equip­ment to pro­duce block ice and space to ac­com­mo­date cold stor­age is now an open stretch of two acres land. The Fur­ness Elec­tric Ice Com­pa­ny Ltd is no more. Though it formed part of Port-of-Spain's his­to­ry, the com­pa­ny had to be closed. Ig­natius Fer­reira and William Fer­reira, chair­men and chief ex­ec­u­tives of Fur­ness Trinidad Group of Com­pa­nies, said there was need to close the doors of the fac­to­ry as sales had slowed sig­nif­i­cant­ly. A sec­ond rea­son for the clo­sure was due to oc­cu­pa­tion­al, safe­ty and health con­cerns raised by Pow­er­gen–lo­cat­ed along Wright­son Road and Colville Streets–about am­mo­nia that the ice fac­to­ry used.

"Re­mem­ber, we were op­er­at­ing an am­mo­nia plant next to an elec­tric­i­ty plant–which is Pow­er­gen. That posed a ma­jor prob­lem in re­la­tion to Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act (Os­ha), and the var­i­ous things in­volved in op­er­at­ing an am­mo­nia plant next to an elec­tric­i­ty plant.

"We and T&TEC were al­ways con­cerned that should there be am­mo­nia leaks since there was a lot of pip­ing, that we would run in­to dif­fi­cul­ty with the safe­ty as­pect," William said. He said Pow­er­gen sup­port­ed the clo­sure of the fac­to­ry be­cause its man­age­ment was not com­fort­able with the use of am­mo­nia near its elec­tric­i­ty plant.

LEFT: Ig­natius Fer­reira, chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive of Fur­ness Trinidad Group of Com­pa­nies.

RIGHT: William Fer­reira, chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive of Fur­ness Trinidad Group of Com­pa­nies.

"Pow­er­gen com­mend­ed the clo­sure of the Ari­api­ta Av­enue branch of the ice fac­to­ry be­cause they suf­fered a lot of am­mo­nia set­backs and they were al­ways very con­cerned. They even put on pro­tec­tion, so if am­mo­nia was in the air, it would sound off bells/alarms be­cause am­mo­nia is a very ex­plo­sive mix­ture. "You are op­er­at­ing with gas and fire. It is a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, un­less the plant was re-done with all the safe­ty mea­sures that need­ed to be put in place. This was not the main rea­son for the clo­sure, though," William said.

The clo­sure

With Fur­ness Elec­tric Ice Com­pa­ny pay­ing $60,000 a month for elec­tric­i­ty and the de­mand for block ice cool­ing, the out­look was grim, the sig­nals clear. The fac­to­ry had to close. "The on­ly pe­ri­ods which we got good sales were at Christ­mas and Car­ni­val time," Ig­natius said. He said Car­ni­val was a pe­ri­od where they "could not make enough bags of ice to sell and they would run-out." The months af­ter those pe­ri­ods, the fac­to­ry had to cut back pro­duc­tion be­cause de­mand for ice dipped.

Ice fac­to­ry's his­to­ry

The Elec­tric Ice Com­pa­ny Ltd (EICL) bor­dered Ari­api­ta Av­enue and Colville Street in Port-of-Spain. It was pur­chased in the ear­ly 1980s and then be­came known as Fur­ness Elec­tric Ice Com­pa­ny Ltd.

Pri­or to the pur­chase of EICL, it was owned by Britain-based Fur­ness Withy, which was once list­ed on the Lon­don Stock Ex­change and, at the time, was in the trans­port busi­ness.

Ac­cord­ing to the book, Fur­ness Withy–1891-1991:

"Ini­tial­ly, Fur­ness Withy en­deav­oured to pur­chase the ship­ping in­ter­ests on­ly, but to no avail. They, there­fore, com­plet­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions by tak­ing over all Trinidad Ship­ping and Trad­ing's busi­ness, in­clud­ing Queen's Park Ho­tel, the prin­ci­pal ho­tel in the is­land, Trinidad Es­tates Com­pa­ny Ltd, cold stor­age and ice-mak­ing fa­cil­i­ties, ship re­pair shops and a slip­way, plus tim­ber and sawmilling and lime­stone quar­ries.

The ship­ping and ma­rine in­ter­ests were ab­sorbed by Fur­ness Withy, whilst in 1921 Trinidad Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd was formed to op­er­ate the var­i­ous oth­er in­ter­ests. Sug­ar es­tate in­ter­ests were passed to Ca­roni Sug­ar Es­tates (Trinidad) Ltd in 1924 and sub­se­quent­ly to Tate & Lyle." William de­scribed how ice was de­liv­ered in the ear­ly days.

"What they would do is take a block of ice and rest it out­side of the build­ing. We had horse-towed carts that would move around the city of Port-of-Spain and drop off the ice to the busi­ness places," William said. The hors­es were kept at the cor­ner of Rich­mond and Queen Streets where Mecal­fab House is now lo­cat­ed.

Hand-churned ice-cream

The his­to­ry was so rich that it spilled in­to house­holds and be­came part of many fam­i­lies, like that of Port-of-Spain May­or, Murchi­son Brown. Men­tion of the ice fac­to­ry brought back mem­o­ries of Brown's child­hood days more than 50 years ago. "What I re­mem­ber very much about the ice fac­to­ry was that on Sun­days, there was al­ways the tra­di­tion of mak­ing ice-cream at home and, it was the type which you turned with your hand." As a boy, Brown would go to the fac­to­ry, buy 25 pounds of ice, put it on his bi­cy­cle and take it home when he lived at 6 Luis Street, Wood­brook. Brown lat­er lived at 27 Al­fre­do Street, Wood­brook.

"The ice would be chipped, the ice-cream was mixed, put in­to a can with the palette in it, then the han­dle to turn is at­tached to the palette, the chipped ice is placed in­to the ac­tu­al pail, salt is thrown on it be­cause salt keeps the ice. "As chil­dren, we took turns to turn it, the stiffer the ice-cream gets, you would feel the ice cream com­ing in. Af­ter a while, mom would come and check it. She would take off the han­dle to see what is the sta­tus of it." For Brown, hand-churned ice-cream–co­conut or cus­tard be­ing the favourites–was the best.

"The ice fac­to­ry that was lo­cat­ed on Ari­api­ta Av­enue is all gone now, but it was an in­te­gral part of Port-of-Spain. Some­times you would pass there and would see traf­fic to pur­chase the big block of ice. They used to de­liv­er ice. There used to be the large cold stor­age ve­hi­cles that they de­liv­ered ice in. They de­liv­ered to those who sell fish and even to par­lours in those days. Not many es­tab­lish­ments had fridges," Brown said. "When you go to buy ice and they open those big chiller doors and that draft hits you–oooh. The guys used to wear long-sleeved gloves to han­dle the ice and to go in­to the big freez­ers that were at the fac­to­ry," he said.

Par­ty ice, a good fit

William said the de­ci­sion to buy the Elec­tric Ice Com­pa­ny, which was owned by a con­sor­tium of peo­ple, looked at­trac­tive be­cause it pro­duced par­ty ice, which was a "hot" sell­er. "When we bought Elec­tric Ice about 40 years ago, it gave us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go in­to par­ty ice. Elec­tric Ice Com­pa­ny had a cold stor­age and it fit­ted in­to our busi­ness that we had," William said. "It was called Elec­tric Ice Com­pa­ny Ltd and when we bought it, we changed the name to re­flect the own­er­ship," William said. Re­fer­ring to the cold stor­age fa­cil­i­ty on Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain, William said 40-foot con­tain­ers had a prob­lem in ne­go­ti­at­ing the tight cor­ner of Rich­mond and Queen Streets.

Asked why the fac­to­ry at Ari­api­ta Av­enue and Colville Street was not turned in­to a mu­se­um, he said such a ven­ture would have been cost­ly.

"It's a valu­able prop­er­ty and we in­tend to put up a five-storey build­ing and, right now, we are de­cid­ing what we want to do with it in terms of how it would look," William said. Fa­ther and son agree: it's time to roll with a chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment. "With the ad­vent of con­tainer­ised ship­ping, you can plan when your ship­ments would ar­rive. Most of our cus­tomers have opt­ed to put in cold stor­age rooms in their busi­ness places," William said. He said JTA Su­per­mar­kets Ltd, Hi-Lo Food Stores and Tru Valu Su­per­mar­ket Ltd were some of the fac­to­ry's biggest cus­tomers. Some of the items kept in cold stor­age in­clud­ed veg­eta­bles, pota­to and meats. "Im­por­ta­tion of chick­en, meats and oth­er prod­ucts which need­ed re­frig­er­a­tion," William said.

Busi­ness slowed with the in­ven­tion of re­frig­er­a­tors and stor­age freez­ers. "Sales slowed five years ago. We have been car­ry­ing the com­pa­ny at a loss for many years. "We shut down the com­pa­ny af­ter Car­ni­val 2009. We start­ed to trans­fer the cold stor­age," William said. "Our start of wind­ing down that busi­ness be­gan in San Fer­nan­do where we closed that op­er­a­tion be­cause of loss­es, and high pub­lic util­i­ty rates like wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty," William said. "What the ice fac­to­ry was made up of was an en­gine room, four walls and tanks. The cold stor­age ac­tu­al­ly was ex­tend­ed when we bought it," William said. It cost an es­ti­mat­ed $300,000 and a month to dis­man­tle the ice fac­to­ry. "We moved the cold stor­age di­vi­sion. in­clud­ing all the cus­tomers, to our plant here in Sea Lots, since we have one of the largest cold stor­age here. This fa­cil­i­ty is sec­ond to none," William said. He said the tanks were lo­cat­ed un­der­ground and when re­moved, the bro­ken down walls of the fac­to­ry were used to fill the space the tanks oc­cu­pied.