Great China Match Factory & Lime Kiln: Peng Chau, Hong Kong
(images via: Discover Hong Kong and Panoramio/Peng Chau News)
The Great China Match Factory was founded in 1930 by Liu Hong-sheng, “The Match King of Shanghai”, and rapidly grew to become the biggest single enterprise on the British-controlled island. Having survived Japanese occupation during World War II, the Great China Match Company finally bit the dust in the 1970s when demand for matches dropped below the level required to keep the factory operating.
(image via: South China Morning Post)
Tourists who step off the beaten track and venture onto tiny Peng Chau island will find remnants of the Great China match Company on Peng Lei Road, along with some of the lime kilns that were one of the island’s other main industrial activities.
Vulkans Match Factory: Kuldiga, Latvia
(images via: Panoramio/Laima G?tmane (simka) and Fotoblog.lv)
The ancient town of Kuldiga, Latvia was never very large but it did have one big claim to fame: it was home to the largest match factory in Czarist Russia. Established in 1878, the Vulkans match factory consisted of a number of architecturally interesting red brick buildings and a pair of towering smokestacks. Looks a little like a steampunk Chernobyl, doesn’t it? The factory finally closed in 2004 and has lain abandoned ever since… and boy, does it ever look it!
(image via: Geolocation)
The website Fotoblog.lv features a varied selection of large images taken at the Vulkans Match factory in 2009. The photos were snapped on an overcast day and the ominous lighting accentuates the rather forbidding nature of the crumbling factory and its many outbuildings.
Match Factory: Crawfordsville, IN, USA
(images via: Journalreview.com)
The old match factory in Crawfordsville, Indiana was old, there’s no doubt of that. Mentioned in passing as early as 1893, the factory sat abandoned and overgrown with ivy for many decades before a bulging wall brought the structure’s viability into question. The City of Crawfordsville decided the only possible course of action was to demolish the unwanted building on Elmore Street. One sunny day in June of 2013, the excavators moved in and in mere minutes a Crawfordsville landmark was reduced to shattered bricks and scattered dust.
(image via: Journalreview.com)
One might say the century-old factory was “no match” for the power of modern machinery but that would be just too obvious. Fact is, matches have been going the way of buggy whip emporiums and video rental stores for some time now… even China-based matchmakers are throwing in the towel. Just be sure it’s a damp one.
