Before terminating his studies at the Industrial and Commercial Institute of Lisbon Alfredo da Silva was caught up in another reform, the industrial and commercial teaching reform of João Franco decreed on the 8th of October, which was applied under great protest, during the school year of 1891-1892 and prolonged unexpectedly the education plan of Alfredo da Silva, who finished with a diploma in the "Course of High Level Commercial Negotiations", the name the new reform invented for the Higher Education Course of Commerce. And not even the student's protests led by the indefatigable Alfredo da Silva could prevent it from happening.
An enormous campaign began in favour of the just cause of the students who complained that the reform affected their acquired rights. Even though it failed, it nevertheless served to show other aspects of the personality of Alfredo da Silva - determination, tenacity and a great capacity to mobilize means to gains ends, and a great transformer, all of which would markedly influence his future actions, in particular, the way he directed the chemical industries.
The fact that it was a creditor of the "Companhia Aliança Fabril", a company that produced oils (in particular oil from the edible pine seed) soaps and candles, and whose factory was in Av.24 Julho in Alcântara in Lisbon, the Lusitano Bank, involved in the bankruptcy process, was the via that brought Alfredo da Silva in touch with the chemical industry, because as shareholder of this Bank he took over the management of the bankruptcy process and the company itself. He began in 1893 when he substituted the previous director and by 1894 he was managing director of the Company. In 1898 a very big fire in the factory building, together with the fact that the oil-soap-candles market was becoming saturated created serious difficulties. In the meantime the fusion, promoted by Alfredo da Silva with another company in the same field, Companhia União Fabril (equally situated in Alcântara) during the year of the fire, became strengthened and this was the beginning of a phase that was to be fundamental for the future development of the joint companies, now known as "Companhia União Fabril" - the phase of Alfredo da Silva as managing director of the Company as from 14th April 1898.
The measure of the 28th.November 1898 taken by this management, with which the new society began the production and commercialization of fertilizers, marked the start of innovative production. In effect, and in accordance with the data available, the production of fertilizers in both companies was never more than the mere use for commercial means of the residues of the so called "husks" ( see Advertisement of the Companhia União Fabril in Attachment VI), that could be used as fertilizers - the organics, that the Agricultural Chemistry considered as intermediaries that could be used in the process of mineral alimentation of plants - using not only the pine seed oil, which was mainly used in the production of soap, and "husks" adequate for grain production, but also the reduced (in habits and size) market that traditionally used all type of materials possible to produce soil fertilizers such as brushwood , alga, sargasso, husks, even human faeces and urine, when there was as lack of animal excrement vacuum . Even though at this time the Companhia União Fabril processed other important oleaginous products apart from pine seed oil, such as linseed oil, coconut oil, peanut, sesame oil, rape oil, the fact is that the company didn't apply them in the fertilizer field.
At the end of the XIX century, the development of fertilizers was assisted by a protectionist policy for the production of grain, namely wheat, and also by the availability of land cultivated in the 1890s which was particularly indicated for this particular cereal, in spite of the strong competition in this sector, not only from the representatives of foreign companies (Casa Abecassis Irmãos - that commercialized in Portugal the superphosphate of Saint Gobain, for example), but also the chemical producers who had already adopted the matrix for its development and discovered the most effective formula for survival and economic profitability, where the production of fertilizers had a most important role - we refer to the chemical products factory in Póvoa de Santa Iria, the Companhia Real Promotora da Agricultura Portuguesa and Tinoca Ltd. Taking advantage of the situation, Alfredo da Silva began to promote elementary , compound, organic and chemical fertilizers produced or only commercialized within the new society, obliging it to take a step forward, which only the future would show how far this was an effective rupture with all that previously characterized these two companies in Alcântara.
By promoting the "Fábrica União" das Fontaínhas to the Great Chemical Fertilizers Factory in Alcântara "Alfredo da Silva gradually transformed the chemical fertilizer into the main product of the Companhia União Fabril, however difficulties at local level regarding the development of the factory in question, would very soon make it necessary to re-equationate the Company's production, and transfer both companies from Alcântara to the other margin of the river Tagus, to the town of Barreiro, thereby opening a new chapter ( and without doubt the most important, due to the social implications) of its the history.
Before that, and apart from the promotion of the product fertilizer , in the new CUF, Alfredo da Silva will modernize other production, the oils and the soaps. In CUF at the beginning of the XX efforts are concentrated on reform (new products, processes. machinery, installations, energy supply and transport network). The "Agricultural Advertising Service" of the Company is created under the management of the agronomist Amando de Seabra. Alfredo da Silva divides his time between new contacts abroad and fertilizer auctions for the Southern Leagues of the country. In view of the difficulties encountered in the production of soap, he overcomes the lack of foreign know how with a technical solution that he tests, with good results, assisted by the foreman and under foreman of the Fábrica União; and has no fear at all of the factory, as it is, in all aspects, completely familiar to him.
In 1906 the perspective of yet another good opportunity, the acquisition of a factory and respective olive-press in Alferrarede, involves CUF for the first time in the business of oils and the chemical extraction of olive oil. To avoid competition, it was decided to that a position south of the Tagus was vital, and Barreiro was indicated by Alfredo da Silva as being the ideal place - an enormous piece of land belonging to Bensaúde & C.ª with ideal conditions (rail links to the railway station and also a quay, for example) which immediately opened up the possibility of expansion to other fields of activity, such as the production, on a large scale of Superphosphate.
To all this we can associate the idea, the planning, the business trips and international contacts and the energetic action of Alfredo da Silva. The process of direct involvement of the then general manager and technical director of the Company culminated in 1907/08 with the installation in Barreiro of a second factory of oil extraction. This will be the first one to testify to the radical aspect of this new industrial paradigm, inorganic chemistry, instead of organic-extractive, developed from the application of thermo-chemical methods - in particular the obtaining of sulphur dioxide by the roasting of pyrites, the corner stone of production of this initial phase in Barreiro - in the place of physical operations to obtain oils (the matrix of Alcântara) for the Companhia União Fabril . To plan and manage the Barreiro factory complex - which in just a few decades was to become a true industrial complex (in the 1960's it was listed as one of the 200 biggest industrial companies in Portugal and was the largest Iberian chemical-industrial complex), a technician by the name of A. L. Stinville, an engineer, supposedly French was called in. Under his jurisdiction sulphuric acid factories by the Lead Chambers process were installed, superphosphates factories, a «lessivage» for the ashes of roasted pyrites , a copper metallurgy, the production of sodium sulphate and hydrochloric acid factory, the production of copper sulphate, a chlorinating roasting to recover copper from the ashes and a sintering to obtain the "purple ore".
The active period of Stinville in the Companhia União Fabril began around 1907, at exactly the same time that Alfredo da Silva disappeared from the direct technical scene and finished at the end of the 1920's. Stinville is still an unsolved enigma as too is the total confidence the "Boss" of CUF deposited in him. The chemical industries that CUF established in Barreiro during the first decades of the XX century plus their technology were by no means strangers to Alfredo da Silva, who most certainly would have felt great personal pleasure in participating, however his lucidity, his decision to step down and hand over the leadership revealed his awareness of the fact that the new technological challenge was in the European dimension of the factories and that he did not wish to take that path alone. |
