Hua Hong Ice Factory : From Scraps to Crepe

 

When I was young I had the opportunity to collect dried up rubber latex from the trees and made them into rubber balls. The latex had flowed into the latex cups early in the morning and by eleven a.m what oozed out slowly and left on the tree became dried by the afternoon. We had to quickly collect these dried up bits as soon as possible before any one else was the wiser. These scraps helped my cousins earn their pocket money to buy their exercise books and pencils.

I did not know then as a young child that my grandfather's Hua Hong Factory was the first crepe rubber factory in the Rajang Valley.

It must have been  Rev Hoover who introduced a great recycling idea to the Foochows of Sibu.

This was to turn all the rubber scraps one could find into Rubber Crepe and my grandfather was the guy selected to purchase the first crepe making machine.

Today, rubber crepe is still a very significant material in the manufacturing world, for example, the sole of many shoes are actually made from rubber crepe.

The Foochows call the rubber scraps (from latex bowls, from dried droplets of latex etc) Neng Si and they would be collected and shaped into a ball usually. These scrap rubber balls could be sold for a few cents in the olden days. Thus children would try their best to look for rubber scraps like what people would do today - looking for scrap metal.

Scrap rubber can be very smelly if wet or left in the yards. Usually these rubber balls would be kept in a big rattan basket which would then be brought to Sibu. The receiving middle men in the 50's and 60's were Chop Ching Chiong at Island Road, and Chop Hock Chiong at Bank Road. Parents would be happy to collect some cash from the sale of the scrap rubber and reward their children with some pocket money. But for some families it would really mean food on the table.

My grandfather's Hua Hong Ice Factory across the river from Sibu collected scrap rubber and made it into rubber crepe even before the Japanese war.  The imported machine produced beautiful rolls and rolls of rubber crepe"cloth",

It was a good business then because the rubber scraps were cheap to buy and the simple machinery was able to produce a highly demanded finished product which was clean, easily transported and not smelly (because of the washing). Thus my grandfather was happy that he had a good profit margin.

Many local Ibans and Malays would bring their scrap rubber to the factory in exchange for some cash. One of the clerks (Mr. Lee) would jokingly tell the other workers  " Rubber scrap or neng si smells bad but it brings in cash." 

Sometimes the office of the manager at Hua Hong would be full of people bringing their scrap rubber for weighing and a good conversation could be heard. The relationship between the suppliers and towkay was extremely good.

The demand for crepe rubber from Sarawak probably stopped in the late 50's when Malaya captured the market and Singapore went into other exports. Singapore was actually a big market for Sarawak rubber and crepe rubber.

Many older folks from Sibu still remember Hua Hong Factory employees drying the crepe rubber in the yard before they were rolled up in bales for export. They said that the rubber crepe looked like textile in the sun. "Except, they smelled a bit!!|