The firm of Hardy & Co., of Las Palmas, near Resistencia, own a factory which cost £50,000, and produces 200 tons of extract monthly.
The Formosa company, which deals in timber and quebracho tannin, has a capital of £200,000. This company owns 96 square leagues of forest—some 880 square miles—which are estimated to contain 2 million tons of quebracho. This company intends to establish a factory capable of producing 15,000 tons of tannin yearly.
The Compañia Azucarera de Resistencia, with a capital of £22,700, produces 80 tons of extract monthly, and the factory of M. Benito Pinasco, at Guaycurú, on the Santa Fé railway line, produces 30 tons.
Besides these factories, Señors Charles and Joseph Casado, the Argentine owners of 2800 square leagues of land (over 25,000 square miles), in the Paraguayan Chaco, have established two factories, one at Puerto Casado and the other at Puerto Sastre, which produce, respectively, 500 and 1000 tons of extract per month.
The average yield of quebracho wood is 25 per cent. of extract; but as the extract contains a number of resinous and colouring matters, which must be eliminated during the process of manufacture, the net yield is 22 to 23 per cent. of solid extract containing 20 per cent. of water, which contains 70 to 73·5 per cent. of tannic oxide—that is, pure tannin.
The system employed in extracting the tannin is based upon diffusion. Firstly, the wood is reduced to powder by means of machines which cut or saw the wood, into which the logs are fed entire. Then, when the wood is converted into sawdust or fine chips or shavings, it is passed through extractors or diffusers, which separate the cellulose from the tannin, which is finally concentrated to the degree demanded by the market by means of vacuum pans.
During five years, from 1904 to 1908, the exports were: 20,111 tons in 1904; 29,408 tons in 1905; 30,839 tons in 1906; 28,190 tons in 1907; 48,160 tons in 1908.
Germany and the United States are the chief buyers of this valuable product, which forms the principal wealth of the northern part of the Argentine.
In the first edition of this book we prophesied a rapid and prosperous development for this industry, which had already received a considerable impetus; unhappily this prediction has not been realised in practice, and the quebracho industry has suffered, not precisely a crisis, but a diminution of its outlets which has seriously prejudiced its interests.
This trouble is due to various causes. Firstly, the ruinous competition between the various firms producing quebracho tannin; a competition which has now happily disappeared, thanks to an arrangement concluded between the principal companies, on the initiative of M. Hermann Schlieper; secondly, to the almost prohibitive duties which the German Government has imposed upon the importation of the product; thirdly, the indifference shown by the railway companies in using on their permanent way sleepers of steel rather than of quebracho, although the latter is more durable. It is to be hoped, however, that in course of time these