annual 2010/2011 of the croatian academy of engineering - HATZ

Annual 2010/2011 of the Croatian Academy of Engineering 29
to process Spanish broom fabric. [3]
During the ‘30s of the past century, foresters widely recommended the cultivation of Spanish
Broom (Spartium junceum) in the coastal karst areas, more precisely M. Ani Ph. D
in Forest Journal in 1937 and engineer Stane Benko in his booklet on Spanish Broom,
published by the Ministry of Industry and Mining, in Zagreb, 1946. Member of the Institute
for Forestry Research Ante Premuži explains the possibility of using Spanish Broom
for economic purposes in his report Systematic cultivation of Spanish broom in our karst
areas, published in the Forest Journal. He wrote that diverse biological properties could
be put to good use for forestation of poor soil of the coastal limestone area since Spanish
Broom grows on clay and limestone soil of neutral, acid and alkali reaction. Positive sides
of its cultivation were highly praised, giving these studies a more propaganda character.
Alongside the coast of east Adriatic, people used and processed Spanish Broom in various
ways, but it was also harvested in Istria and the coastal area of Dubrovnik in the period of
Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, and later between the two World Wars. It was then harvested
by the army, tied up in bundles and exported to Italy for manufacturing military suits.
There were many attempts of industrial processing in our country. Let us remember the
previously mentioned initiative of Rajkovi, which spread across the entire Adriatic, gaining
the status of industrial processing. Immediately after the World War I in 1919, there
was an attempt in Omiš to process Spanish Broom in bulk. A factory was also built for its
processing. However, the rst attempt failed since Spanish Broom had been soaked in the
sea for six months, thereby rotting. There were no further attempts from then on. Only
after the end of World War II, Spanish Broom was rediscovered, mostly due to a shortage
of textile raw material during the post-war period.
The processing actually started two years after the W. W. II (1947). Around two trucks of
Spanish Broom, harvested near Rabac and Labin (Istria), were turned over to the district of
Pula to send it for processing in the factory in Fažana. It was also decided to build factories
in Vodice and Zakuac near Omiš. There was a second attempt to revive the production,
this time using state-of-the art methods, quite near where the rst plant had been constructed
in 1919. The process of maceration was chemical, and a device for hot-air drying was
used. In the paper factory in Rijeka, a department was turned into a laboratory for testing.
In order to save on transport of raw material, someone suggested turning an old ship into a
oating factory, which would cruise in the Adriatic and process Spanish Broom, quite expensive
to harvest. The results of this test production were taken over for further processing
by certain spinning mills in Croatia and Slovenia, and so rst test products were actually
produced. However, the process stops there. The whole initiative, which had started positively,
stopped abruptly, allegedly due to high purchasing price, and so traditional processing
remained in the hands of the people. [3].
There were other attempts to process Spanish Broom industrially. In Vodice, between 1946
and 1949, a factory was built for the processing of Spanish Broom. It worked until 1954,
when it was shut down due to unprotability. The same factory is scheduled for demolition
today.
According to former workers of the factory (Tvornica Žuke) in Vodice the technological
procedure for obtaining bbers was as follows: branches of Spanish Broom with their
shoots were soaked in sodium alkali for several days. After resting in pools with the alkali,
bers would separate from the other parts. Bundles of Spanish Broom would be subject
to water jets under pressure of four to six atmospheres. The water jets would separate b-