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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Books Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Cold, calm and collected
By Fatemah FaragThe Ghamra Ice Factory is not much to look at. Wide one-storey buildings look out on a dingy courtyard where trucks wait in line to load up the milky white slabs of ice. On the inside the factory is dimly lit, wet and very cool -- not an artificial cool like that let off by air conditioners, but a natural feeling, the effect similar to that created by an earthenware water jug.
The Ghamra Ice Factory is the main producer of those frozen slabs you are bound to have seen around town in various contexts. Maybe they were wrapped in a piece of cloth balanced on a worker's shoulder, crushed as a bed for fresh fish, or broken into the cubes used by the fresh fruit vendors. Despite the multi-purpose nature of their ware, the ice factories of the Greater Cairo area, which once numbered eight, have slowly disappeared. The Haram, Imbaba and Galaa Street factories have long since been demolished, and those that remain are the three-factory complex in Ghamra and a smaller operation in Kit Kat.
Built in 1928, the Ghamra Ice Factory began as a private enterprise owned by one Ahmed Hamza, then became public sector property in 1956. It is currently being rented by a private investor in preparation for its final sale, back to the private sector. Feelings about the current shift in ownership seem mixed. Engineers at the factory were happy about it: "Today we get better financial rewards for our efforts, and when something breaks down we can get it fixed immediately. Before, the paperwork would take a few weeks," says Mohamed Khalifa, head engineer. On the other hand, Khalifa acquiesced that the fate of the factory's 110 workers may not be as positive. "One third of these are appointed, but two thirds are kept on as temporary labour because of the privatisation measures. Before, everyone was appointed, but since the 1980s we only take on temporary labour in order to keep the official number of workers down," he explains.
photos: Khaled El-Fiqi
The original building, factory and work process have been kept functional, although two additional buildings have been added to keep up with demand, bringing the number of production lines to eight. The total output of the factory is 3,000 slabs of ice (balata) per day, each weighing 25kg.
Inside, wide rooms with low ceilings are dominated by tubs covered with grimy wooden planks and filled with reddish-looking brine, the temperature of which ranges from -10 to -4¡C. The rectangular metal moulds are rusty, but as Hassan Fikri, who has been an ice-making engineer for the past 18 years, points out, "that is just a result of the brine. Inside, the boxes are shiny clean." Fikri explains that it takes about 16 hours in the cooling tubs for the ice to be formed, after which the moulds are pulled out by an automated machine and left for a while until the ice can be extracted. The ice is then removed and moved onto tunnels dug in the wall.
Khalifa notes that technology is not always a good thing for ice. "In 1984 we bought new appliances from Italy. These old production lines take 16 hours to freeze the water, but the new machines took only two hours. It sounds impressive, but after we made the ice we took a slab of the old and a slab of the new and put them out in the courtyard in the sun. You know, it took the old slab eight hours to melt and the new one only three! There was no demand for the new ice and we had to convert our new lines to the old system." In a wooden fridge, furthermore, an old-style ice slab lasts for 24 hours. "The technology that has proved useful has come in some very specialised areas. For example, the ice used for fish has to be crushed and this is done by the fish vendors. However, I was involved in installing a new plant in Abu Simbel two years ago, which used a new machine which froze the water into crushed particles, hence eliminating one extra step," says Khalifa.
The tunnels carry the ice out to the parking lot, where trucks line up to receive their share. The ice is then transported to diverse locations. Some batches find their way to local distributors like 'Amm Hussein, who owns a wooden refrigerator he made himself in the Tawfiqiya market. "My clients are the fish vendors, who crush the ice over their produce to keep it fresh, and the juice makers, especially those who make sugar cane juice, because the juice has to pass over ice to cool. You know, of course, that you cannot add cold water to sugar cane juice in particular," he explains. Other slabs are sent to factories such as those that make concrete and pharmaceuticals.
Summer is definitely the high season. Heat is good for ice and, as Khalifa puts it, "I think I am probably the only person who leaves his house in the morning and prays to God that it will be a hot day. I think our best business was last year, during that miserable heat wave. It was great." From November to March, the factory works at 50 per cent of its total capacity and sells the ice more cheaply than in the summer. "Right now, we sell the balata for LE1.52," says Fikri, while street distributors told Al-Ahram Weekly that they retail to customers at LE2.50.
This summer, however, business has been slow. "I don't know why, although it is very hot. When I ask our customers, they tell us there is a slump in the economy and that business is slow," comments Khalifa.
Still, the men of the trade do not fear for their business. "It is true that the wooden fridges don't exist anymore, and that most people have refrigerators instead, but for fishing boats and producers of fresh meat there is no alternative but our ice. If they put their wares in a freezer, they lose their freshness," one of the engineers notes with satisfaction. In support of their argument, the engineers point out that the production of the factory has increased from about 12,000 slabs in 1956 to 30,000 today.
As we leave the factory, the heat of the courtyard hits us. It was nice while it lasted -- as ice tends to be.
