Union fertilizer factory

The chemical industry in Lithuania started out in the late 19th c. and mostly produced paint, varnish, various salts, acids, medicine and cosmetics. The majority of these companies were small. The local company A. Scharfenorth & Co. built a small bone glue, paint and chemical factory on the right side of Danė river in 1869. In 1872 it was purchased and modernised by UNION company from Szczecin (Poland). In 1873 the factory started producing sulphuric acid and superphosphate. Raw materials used to be imported from Spain, USA and even Australia (phosphates, sulphuric acid ammonium, apatite, etc.). The factory mostly used to sell its production in East Prussia and Lithuania. It was quite profitable, selling 14.6 t of fertilizers in 1891. In 1900 the amount of fertilizers produced was already 36 thousand tonnes, but the fire that broke out during the same year, almost destroyed the factory. After the insurance paid the damages, the factory was rebuilt in 1902 and worked at full power until the World War I. In the eve of the World War I the factory used to employ about 300 workers. During the World War II the activity stopped due to lack of raw materials and coal. After the war the shareholders of the factory were unwilling to renew the activity due to the unstable situation. During the winter of 1921–1922 the territory of the suspended UNION factory was turned into a box factory. It didn’t operate long, ruined by the crisis of the wood industry in Klaipėda.
The UNION factory renewed its activity in 1927 and, depending on the season of the year, used to hire 200-500 workers. Using a Penguin brand it used to produce superphosphate, ammonium superphosphate, boron superphosphate, sulfuric acid, sodium silicon fluoride. In 1930 its production was awarded with a gold medal at the Lithuanian Agricultural Exhibition in Kaunas. The most expensive product of the factory – sodium silicon fluoride used for porcelain and glass production – used to be exported to Germany, England, the USA, Japan and China.
The company’s territory was 123 thousand sq. m and it had about 20 buildings. The factory also owned about 400 metres of Danė river embankment. Since the river was a popular tourist route, the architecture of the buildings standing along the river was more intricate. There was a decorous administrative building and seven interjoined timber-framing warehouses facing the river side. They hid the view into an unimpressive inner yard. In the yard there were several seven-storey timber-framing tower reservoirs. The falling water stored in them was used for cooling sulphuric gas. The towers were thirty metres high and five metres wide. There also was a 65 metre chimney rising above the factory. Other buildings were smaller brick or timber-framing houses. The fertiliser factory had a railway connection to the city’s railway.
After the World War II superphosphate (30–50 thousand tonnes per year) used to be produced at a superphosphate factory, which operated in 1947–1956 under a new name – Artojas (former Union factory). Later, after the reconstruction of the factory on Artojų Street, there was a chemical element factory titled Sirijus, which operated until 1996. Currently the buildings of the UNION factory belong to several owners, the majority of them belonging to UAB Laivitė, producing Lithuanian motorboats. The company owners are planning to build an access to the river with a crane for lowering boats into the water.