Waupaca Starch Co 03

Waupaca Post

March 20, 1890

A GREAT ENTERPRISE

The Waupaca Starch and potato Company and Its Factory Here.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKS, AND HOW STARCH IS MADE

Six months ago, when a few enterprising men began to talk of starting a potato starch factory in this city, with a view of utilizing the many thousands of bushels of potatoes that are yearly left in the fields or fed to stock, few, even of the most sanguine supporters of the enterprise imagined the magnificent plant that is now completed, and were the weather warm enough, would be daily turning out ton after ton of first class potato starch. The agitation started by Wright & Co., of Minneapolis, was heartily seconded by local capitalists and eventually the Waupaca Starch and Potato company was incorporated, with J.H. Woodnorth as president, C.J. Shearer as secretary and R.N. Roberts, treasurer. A site was selected on the lands of the Waupaca river, near the Roberts & Oborn mill. Mr. Ed Oborn, a practical mechanic, and F.C. Nickerson, of Minneapolis, a practical starch manufacturer, were put in charge of the construction of the works and today the factory stands, a monument to their energy and push.

The factory buildings consist of a main building 80 x 60, two stories in height, with a lean-to 40 x 20, a dry house 100 x 14, and a boiler and engine room 40 x 20. The latter room is made of brick and is fireproof; the larger buildings are of wood and are painted a dark red color. They are solidly constructed, and much care has been taken to make them perfect in every respect.

The modus operandi of potato starch manufacture is so little known that a POST representative decided to follow a load of potatoes from the time of its arrival on the farmer’s wagon, until it is shipped east as first class potato starch. In describing the process, a description of the various rooms s also given and some idea of the adequateness of the undertaking may be gained therefrom. To commence at the beginning then, the honest tiller of the soil, having bargained with the company’s buyers, drives up to the end of the main building, where is placed a Howe controllable dump scale. After the load is weighed the wagon box is tilted and the potatoes disappear through a chute in the basement, from whence, by a link belt elevator, they are taken up to the storage room in the top of the building at the rate of 300 to 400 bushels per hour. This storage room has a capacity of 10,000 bushels and is located directly over the washing machines. The potatoes are let down from the storage bin to two washing machines, where there is a constant stream of running water and where they are thoroughly cleansed.

They are now ready to be made into starch and are conveyed by means of a lateral screw to two graters, having a capacity of 300 bushels an hour. In these graters the potatoes are crushed into a line of pulp. This pulp is then carried across a fine sieve through which the starch and potato liquor goes, leaving the pulp on the top. By means of a centrifugal pump, the starch, which is then in liquid form, and the potato water are forced through pipes into large vats, or tanks. Of these there are nine, with a capacity of about 500 barrels each, being eighteen feet in diameter and seven feet in height and made of two inch pine staves.

The liquid settles in these vats, the potato water being drawn off by a system of sewerage and the starch into a vat in the center of the building from which it is pumped into the second story for cleansing purposes. In the cleansing room are four tanks 16 x 18 x 4 feet, and in them the final separation of the liquor and the starch takes place. The water is entirely drawn off, leaving the starch in the form of a paste or putty. This paste is then conveyed to the drying room by hand boats. There are two drying rooms, the floors of which are made of slats with about one inch space left between them. At the distance of a foot underneath is a like floor with the slats closer together and still a third under that. These rooms are kept at a temperature of from 160 x 180 degrees by means of a Sturtevant 80-inch fan, sending warm air through 4,000 feet of pipe. As the paste dries it drops from floor to floor, being aided by the moving of the slotted floors, which is done by hand, until when it finally get through to the room beneath it is as fine as flour and is ready for packing. There are two packing rooms, under the two drying rooms, and the starch is loaded into casks and sacks and hauled into the cars, but 30 feet away.

The machinery which supplies the power to make this transformation of a Burbank potato into starch, consists of an eighty horse steel boiler, 60 x 16 feet in size, and a fifty-horse power engine, the make of the Erie City Iron Works, Erie, Pa. The water is supplied from the river, 160 feet away, by a Roberts force pump, with a capacity of 500 gallons per minute. The hot air fan is run by a separate eight horse power engine, also of the Erie company make. As before stated tee boiler room is fire proof and as there is no fire in the building except in the boiler room, the danger of a conflagration is very small. A tank holding about 100 barrels of water is kept constantly filled and any flow of the factory could be flood at a moments notice.

The capacity of the factory as stated, will be about 4,000 bushels of potatoes daily. Eventually then the right kind of timber can be found, the company intends to add a cooper shop and manufacture its own casks. This will give employment to about ten additional men.

All in all the factory seems to be as complete as it is possible for it to be, and when the clerk of the weather gives us milder temperatures, its shrill whistle, summoning fifteen to twenty men to work daily, will re-echo with the pride that Waupaca feels in these new and important addition to the city’s manufactories.