This article first appeared in the Herald in 1997
IT was the forerunner of heavy industry in the region and without success BHP might never have established its Newcastle steelworks.
The Sulphide Corporation Pty Ltd, which became the Pasminco zinc smelter, looked at other sites before deciding on Cockle Creek.
Other sites under discussion were at Teralba, Dudley, West Wallsend and Redhead, as well as the site of an old smelter at Port Waratah (it later became part of the BHP steelworks).
The proposed site at Dudley was opposed almost immediately, not by residents but by landowners at Norah Head who offered land free to the Sulphide company in an effort to get them to build south of Lake Macquarie.
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By March 1896 the possible sites had dwindled to two – Cardiff and Cockle Creek. The latter was chosen because it was close to a coal supply and to the Northern railway line.
It was also in reach of the Port of Newcastle and the coming of Sulphide led to improved wharfage and a call for deepening of the harbour.
The company said it would spend $60,000 building the smelter which would use 1500 tons of coal a day, five days a week.
By July 1896 there were 600 men working on the construction of the smelter.
It was completed by January 1897, although smelting on a small scale had begun a few weeks earlier.
The company needed to move swiftly for in mid-1896 the BHP company purchased the old Port Waratah site and another smelting company was negotiating to buy land at Dudley. By the end of February 1897 the patentee of the process to be used at the smelter, Mr E.Ashcroft, was busy with final tests before ‘‘putting all the huge furnaces in blast’’.
‘‘Ashcroft’s Process’’ did not work at Cockle Creek; it was later stated that Sulphide had lost $250,000 on the Ashcroft experiment, a lot of money in the late 1890s.
Help to overcome the plant’s problems was close to hand. The first manager of the plant, Mr A.E.Savage, invented a new process to treat zinc ores.
It was successful and the Sulphide plant was over its initial problems.
Over the ensuing years there were many changes made to the plant. Sulphide, like many operations, met with success and failure depending on the economic conditions of the period and the demand for the product.
In World War I, Sulphide was one of the largest employers in NSW and the size of its workforce was reflected in its record output. In World War II, the plant produced, among other things, materials used to manufacture explosives.
In 1949 it opened its own coalmine to supply the works, particularly its large cement plant. In 1962 Conzinc Riotinto of Australia (a forerunner of Rio Tinto) took a 75 per cent stake in the Sulphide Corporation Pty Ltd.
The rest of its rise and eventual demise is detailed in the timeline on this page.
