No. 4 (1921) BRINE-FREEZING 55 



railway wagons; at Hamar it is transhipped into refrigerated vans 

 and so passes to Central Europe. 



A second plant, similar in operation to that at Trondhjem, is 

 in operation at Gravarne near Gothenburg in Sweden. Mr. Dahl 

 informs me that six other plants have been arranged for under 

 his patent in California, for the freezing of salmon. 



Those who have worked upon the brine-freezing of fish are 

 unanimously of opinion, whenever the process selected has been 

 properly carried out, that it offers incomparably greater advantages 

 than air-freezing. Hence it is surprising how slow the British 

 fish-trade generally has been to recognize the tremendous potentia- 

 lities of the former process; even yet British firms eye it with 

 conservative suspicion and disfavour, largely through want of 

 discrimination between brine and air-freezing results. It was due 

 solely to the exigencies of the war that the home authorities 

 began to experiment and even the very successful outcome thereof 

 has not made any appreciable impression upon those primarily 

 concerned. 



The French, who of recent years appear to have regained 

 their ancient reputation for boldness of conception and for being 

 least weighed down among the nations by the inertia of 

 conservation, have gone much further, and 1920 saw the 

 establishment by the French Government of a magnificent brine- 

 freezing and refrigerating installation — so far as I know the finest 

 in Europe— at L'Orient in Brittany, The plant is capable of 

 producing 120 tons of ice per day, with ice storage capacity of 

 1,500 tons. 



The object of the works is to deal satisfactorily with the 

 cargoes of frozen fish received from another Government freezing 

 installation at St. Pierre, off the Newfoundland coast, and also to 

 treat whatever fish is caught locally in quantities exceeding the 

 local demand for fresh fish. 



The general method of operation in regard to local fish is 

 as follows: the fresh fish is landed from the trawlers in boxes 

 holding about I^ cwt. ; these are placed on electric trucks and 

 taken into the factory alongside the tables for cleaning and sorting, 

 on to which they are emptied. Very great care is taken in both 

 operations, the fish being sorted both into varieties and sizes. 

 They are then placed in wire-netting trays, each holding about 

 one cwt., which are taken by an electric elevator over a monorail 



