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THE DE BEERS SAGA
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Nobel
ended with the Anglo-Boer War. The Nobel interests, by this time, had
formed a new company under the title of the British South African
Explosives Company, to operate a factory at Modderfontein. The result
was a steady reduction in the price of explosives, De Beers felt, to
all "consumers." There resulted a competition between the Modderfontein
factory of Nobel's and the Somsert West factories of South Africa. Now,
in 1905, De Beers stepped in and formed its own works into a separate
company, the Cape Explosives Works, Ltd., calling its products Capex.
The
Capex products gained popularity with those who knew about explosives.
World War I of 1914-1918 played an important part in the development of
Capex. In I915 the British government requisitioned all stocks of
glycerine. The war also brought about the purchase of the detonator
plant in 1917. Two chemists were sent over to America to learn the
process of manufacturing detonators.
On
January 1, 1924, Capex was finally merged with the Nobel interests.
With the Union leaving the gold standard, an expansion in the output
of explosives followed the rapid development of the gold mines, of
course. But the farming community of the country prospered, too, and
the explosives company was able to insure economic production for
their fertilizer plants. Explosives, you see, are good in peace as well
as in war. They create, they destroy. They are ambidextrous. They are
the embodiment of Jekyll-Hyde.
Today
that explosives venture is now perhaps one of the biggest of its kind
in the world. In fact, in 1936 Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, in a report
dealing with the expansion of the South African explosives industry,
said that the total staff employed was about 5000 and that the company
"was engaged on an extension at Modderfontein which would cost about
$5,000,000, doubling the output of explosives from
(49)
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