DROYT NATURAL GLYCERINE SOAP

Russia

Alistair — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:46:09 +0000

Pavel Danischewsky was the grandson of the original founders and the man who brought the soap company to England after leaving Berlin in the late 1930’s. During his life he witnessed many remarkable things. He was an inveterate story teller. I was lucky enough to hear a few and I remembered one the other day when the subject of ‘dacha’s came up. These were the summer houses that initially wealthy and subsequently ordinary Russians would have to escape from the city at the weekends in order to grow food and to breathe the country air.

RECENT VIEW OF DACHAS

The story is that while the family were escaping from Russia after losing their factory to the Bolsheviks, they spent some time in a dacha outside Moscow, before they could travel on to Berlin. Papa Danischewsky expressly forebade the young Pavel (who was a teenager at this time) from straying too far from the hideout as they were trying to keep a low profile. In this time of uncertainty, many dachas lay empty or abandoned as their owners stayed away or had ‘disappeared’. Pavel, being adventurous, instantly started exploring these properties and seeing what he could find. It appears he found some quite useful stuff but how that made it’s way back into the household without his father getting wind of it, I’m not sure. Anyway, one of the items of contraband he uncovered was a stash of Turkish cigarettes, which obviously he started smoking, and probably contributed to his lifetime habit. He said he felt bad though, not because he was defying his father, but that he couldn’t offer him any, as his dad liked to smoke and was reduced to making his own using dried leaves and cones of newspaper.

Just to put this era into context, one of the events Pavel witnessed was a rally with speeches by Leon Trotsky and VI Lenin.

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Historical data

Alistair — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:09:58 +0000

This must be from the early fifties although there’s no date on it. When we first produced PC49 the retail price was 1s/3d, which is what it says here and that was in 1950 when you also had to use a ration coupon.

Quite a few of the figure soaps had glass eyes. I don’t think we’d get away with that today! However, you can still get a safe gold paint, so if we ever wanted to make PC49 again, (who had gold buttons and helmet crest), the painting would be the least of our problems.

Chair today

Alistair — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:52:37 +0000

I am sitting in magnificent comfort typing this. No longer is my chin resting on the desk as I gaze up at my monitor like some new bug called in to the headmaster’s office. No, I am enthroned in slightly plasticky glory as I have finally upgraded my chair after receiving a particularly well timed email from a furniture supply place in Glasgow. Seeing the two side by side makes me realise how much the old chair is the sort of chair some no-hoper would be sitting on - some lower management deadbeat, sitting alone at the back of the building, passing the days in solitary contemplation awaiting the final call from HR. The new chair, on the other hand, is one befitting a sort of thrusting young (ish) executive with places to go and people to fire.

Admittedly there are some downsides. The castors seem to be made of Teflon with an extra coating of high slip grease. An inadvertent cough causes me to slam at high speed into the wall behind me. Reaching to my left causes me to slide to my right. I can feel my back starting to protest as the vertebrae, unused to such contortions, are twisted like novelty balloons at a children’s party. Also the tilt back mechanism seems to be set to a very narrow range of tilt forward, somewhere between transferring cake and emptying wheelbarrow. It feels like I’m perpetually falling, particularly when I wake up. But it is very shiny and that’s got to be a good thing.

On the radio

Alistair — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:28:54 +0000

Those of you who have listened to Radio 5 Live recently may have heard our esteemed MD, Chris Effendowicz, sharing his thoughts on the impact of high commodity costs on UK manufacturers. For us this is a very important issue but it has wider implications, as several commentators have already said. Although the general assumption is that the rise in commodity prices in a recession can only be due to speculation, as traders work the futures market. I’m sure that this is true, but also prices are going up because demand is outstripping supply. In some cases, manufacturing sites have been shut down for efficiency savings, meaning that there is no spare production to cover spikes in demand, meaning shortages and hence higher prices. So even if raw materials costs fall, as they undoubtedly will one day, the fact that is that higher prices are probably here to stay. Which is bad news all round.

Show from April 28th

Crimson Petal and the White

Alistair — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:31:00 +0000

Tomorrow on BBC2 at 9pm is a new drama, a book adaption based on the best-selling Victorian-set novel by Michel Faber.

This is obviously interesting in itself, but is made all the more relevant by the fact the Droyt’s supplied some soap to the production for use in one of the scenes (set in a soap factory I believe).

I really don’t know which episode we feature in, and it might well be 5 minutes from the end of the last one, but

I think this might be the first time we’ll have been on TV since the famous Tikkabilla exposé a few years ago.

Obviously this clashes with a football match on the other side, so something might have to give. Worth a look, though!

Spring cleaning in the factory

Alistair — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:39:00 +0000

We keep finding interesting things and here is another. It’s the manifest from an old packing case that was up on a shelf and used for storing old bits and pieces. The first column is the product code, then the gross weight and then the quantity. Also, after the first column, there’s a handwritten column of descriptions (82 Bulldog, 150 Glycerine etc.). We haven’t managed to identify them all though! A bit more detective work is required.

It’s from the 50’s or 60’s and we were shipping by train then in special packing cases. Once the goods had been boxed, they’d be taken down to the goods yard at Chorley station for shipping.

Dark clouds over Chorley

Alistair — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:25:18 +0000

Saying goodbye to some visitors, and we saw a double rainbow at the end of the street. Actually a triple but the photo doesn’t show that. Since I had the camera, I took a photo of something else. I think we need to paint the front door!

Bottle issues for Droyt Organic Liquid Soap

Alistair — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:35:23 +0000

We’ve had a few issues recently with the bottles, which we’re trying to resolve. Actually not so much with the bottle but the pump, which sometimes refuses to work. We’re not quite sure why, but we are lookng into it and talking to the manufacturers. It hasn’t been a problem in the past so we’re hoping it’s a temporary issue. In the meantime, if any customers find a bottle with a faulty pump, please contact us and we’ll send a replacement.

Matching Pears - Pears Soap formula change

Alistair — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:53:41 +0000

We are probably the only people in the world who still make factory scale Transparent Glycerine soap in a similar way to the original Pears. Ours is cast into large one tonne blocks and then cut down by hand into bars before stamping into shape. As you can imagine we have been very interested in the debate about the Pears formulation change and my own personal opinion is that the change was purely for cost saving. Raw material prices have increased dramatically over the last couple of years and since these are global commodities (like coconut oil and
glycerine), it makes little difference if you are based in Mumbai or Manchester. Also this process is very labour intensive, which is a significant cost, no matter where your factory is based. For comparison, in the UK, Pears sells for about 60p but our equivalent is more than double that. As for the ingredients listing, one reason for the increased number of ingredients on the Pears packaging is that new EC regulations mean that some perfume components need to be listed whereas before they would be covered by ‘parfum’ or ‘perfume’.
I am trying my best to be balanced here! Manufacturing is hard enough without soap makers having a go at each other. Hope that’s a useful bit of background. The Pine Tree is there because it’s the source for Rosin. The Maple Wood is because Rosin is farmed in much the same way as Maple syrup.

45 years at work

Alistair — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:06:36 +0000

Not only is it a lovely warm (relatively) sunny day here in Chorley, but also we finish work at lunchtime (or dinnertime, if you prefer) to honour the long service of one of our employees, Eileen, who retires today. She started working at the soap factory under the management of AP Danischewsky in 1965, aged 15, and apart from taking time out to raise a family, I don’t think she’s ever worked anywhere else. I’d like to say ’which was before I was born’ after the 1965 but sadly, it wouldn’t be true. It seems such a long time ago. Tom Jones in the charts and Leeds in the top flight, and so on. It’s an interesting topic for debate - whether this sort of achievement is less likely to occur with our current, more mobile workforce, but I think it says something about the work and also the working environment at this factory, that we have had several retirements recently of long serving employees. Anyway, it’s also an excuse for a drink or two in the middle of the day, which probably means that while I will come back into the office afterwards, I won’t be doing anything critical. The Chorley Guardian have just turned up to take photos, so I’ll try and remember to post the link when they publish. TGIF.