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This paperfactory, hidden among the pine trees, has had a rich history. It was built in the beginning of the 20th century, in quite hostile terrain, and had more than 300 employees working on the site. During it's existence it has had many ups and downs, but it managed to remain active during the century. At one point the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, and luckily there was a possibility of acquisition. Unfortunately this did not last long, and according to people who worked here, the company stopped existing due to failing and corrupt management. It has now been left alone in the woods...
Please visit www.preciousdecay.com for more pictures
Our friends with the ninja driving skills, rikshaw driver Sabhir and his friends, took us to see a paper factory he thought we might like. He was right, too - amazing to watch them making really thick heavyweight or incredibly light and fragile paper. Much of it had petals or pieces of fabric mashed into the paper, and then a great deal was beautifully block printed with intricate patterns. I bought about twenty sheets in the end, (at a total cost of about £2.30) but like a loon managed to leave them in our hotel when we left for Rajasthan.
Still, a nifty place.
This paperfactory, hidden among the pine trees, has had a rich history. It was built in the beginning of the 20th century, in quite hostile terrain, and had more than 300 employees working on the site. During it's existence it has had many ups and downs, but it managed to remain active during the century. At one point the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, and luckily there was a possibility of acquisition. Unfortunately this did not last long, and according to people who worked here, the company stopped existing due to failing and corrupt management. It has now been left alone in the woods...
Please visit www.preciousdecay.com for more pictures
This paperfactory, hidden among the pine trees, has had a rich history. It was built in the beginning of the 20th century, in quite hostile terrain, and had more than 300 employees working on the site. During it's existence it has had many ups and downs, but it managed to remain active during the century. At one point the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, and luckily there was a possibility of acquisition. Unfortunately this did not last long, and according to people who worked here, the company stopped existing due to failing and corrupt management. It has now been left alone in the woods...
Please visit www.preciousdecay.com for more pictures
This paperfactory, hidden among the pine trees, has had a rich history. It was built in the beginning of the 20th century, in quite hostile terrain, and had more than 300 employees working on the site. During it's existence it has had many ups and downs, but it managed to remain active during the century. At one point the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, and luckily there was a possibility of acquisition. Unfortunately this did not last long, and according to people who worked here, the company stopped existing due to failing and corrupt management. It has now been left alone in the woods...
Please visit www.preciousdecay.com for more pictures
This paperfactory, hidden among the pine trees, has had a rich history. It was built in the beginning of the 20th century, in quite hostile terrain, and had more than 300 employees working on the site. During it's existence it has had many ups and downs, but it managed to remain active during the century. At one point the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, and luckily there was a possibility of acquisition. Unfortunately this did not last long, and according to people who worked here, the company stopped existing due to failing and corrupt management. It has now been left alone in the woods...
Please visit www.preciousdecay.com for more pictures
This paperfactory, hidden among the pine trees, has had a rich history. It was built in the beginning of the 20th century, in quite hostile terrain, and had more than 300 employees working on the site. During it's existence it has had many ups and downs, but it managed to remain active during the century. At one point the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, and luckily there was a possibility of acquisition. Unfortunately this did not last long, and according to people who worked here, the company stopped existing due to failing and corrupt management. It has now been left alone in the woods...
Please visit www.preciousdecay.com for more pictures
The town of West Point, situated on the peninsula at the convergence of the Mattaponi
and Pamunkey Rivers, grew and became historically important as a result of the shipping and
railroad industries of the second half of the 19th century, but it traces its roots further into the
past. These roots can be traced back at least 400 years.
The first settlement on the site of what is now called West Point was the Indian village of
Cinquoteck used by the Powhatan Confederation. This village was ruled by the Indian Chief
Opechancanough and was used as a staging ground for the 1622 uprising at Jamestown by the
Powhatan Indians.
Elis Olsson, a Swedish-born papermaker, was already a recognized pioneer in the industry when he moved his family from Quebec to Virginia in 1918. Olsson had become director of a corporation he organized with the help of a Norwegian shipping financier, Christoffer Hannevig. Olsson had helped to develop the first kraft process mill in Canada. Kraft paper is the heavy brown paper produced from unbleached pulp that is used for such items as grocery bags. Another of Olsson's technical innovations was the first commercial paper mill boiler to use wastewood and bark for fuel. He also engineered the first modern chemical recovery boiler. When Olsson first moved to West Point, the paper industry was in its infancy.
Chesapeake Corporation began via an agreement to lease the assets of Chesapeake Pulp & Paper Company, a subsidiary of Fox Paper Company, based in Ohio. Included with the leased assets was a sulphate mill in West Point that dated to 1914. The company had not proven profitable and the assets were leased with an option to buy, as the original owners wished to withdraw from the operation. Upon his arrival, Olsson quickly invested in plant improvements; pulp and board mills had deteriorated throughout the United States during World War I. Olsson also put his technical skills to use, revamping the tricky sulphate process that produced paper from pine.
Chesapeake was profitable by 1921, but president Hannevig's shipping empire went under and he resigned from the company. Olsson thus sought both financial backing and a new company president. It was hard to find supportive investors in the shaky postwar climate, but H. Watkins Ellerson, president of one of Chesapeake's pulp customer companies, agreed to back the enterprise and serve as president of a reorganized Chesapeake. Olsson became vice-president, but for all practical purposes he ran the company. One of the first decisions of the restructured corporation was to buy the West Point mill instead of leasing. In 1922 bonds were issued to cover the purchase price, as well as the cost of needed plant improvements.
By 1926 Chesapeake was producing kraft paper, market pulp, crude turpentine, and box board on an average of 85 tons a day. It paid its first dividends the same year, a tradition uninterrupted except by the Great Depression. In 1929 Olsson was named president; he remained a leader in the company for the next 30 years, 14 of them as chairman of the board.
The 1930s were a time of growth for Chesapeake, despite the Depression. In 1932 Chesapeake became the second company in Virginia to hire a professional forester and begin a program of reforestation. Reforestation had been a company undertaking since 1922. As orders dropped off during the Depression, salaries and wages were cut. Nonetheless, Chesapeake's earnings reached the million-dollar mark for the first time in 1934. Chesapeake worked with Camp Manufacturing Company to erect and operate a pulp and paper mill in Franklin, Virginia, in 1936. The new mill was named Chesapeake-Camp Corporation at the time; its name later changed to Union Camp Corporation. Chesapeake eventually sold its interest in the mill.
In 1941 the company name was changed to The Chesapeake Corporation of Virginia. Its stock was offered on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time in 1944. During the labor shortage of World War II, Chesapeake maintained its production levels with the help of women--who worked at office jobs, as well as at cutting pulp wood in the forests--and German and Italian prisoners. In 1945 Olsson became company chairman. His son, Sture Olsson, assumed the position of president of the company in 1951.