Category: Factories

A Sweet Spinner’s Lament

In 1930, the first New Zealand-made bar of Cadbury chocolate was produced at biscuit maker Richard Hudson’s cocoa and chocolate manufacturing plant in Dunedin, founded in 1868. Hudson had been orphaned at the age of 9 and came to New Zealand in 1865. He became known as a caring employer who believed that everyone who contributed to a profitable business should benefit from its success. The company offered accommodation and even a recreational rifle range for its staff across the road from its present site. Cadbury was acquired by Mondelez International in a hostile takeover in 2009, and the factory didn’t quite last the decade following — closing its doors in March 2018. 350 jobs were lost in the closure. The site is now being demolished.
by urbexcentral

Residual Controls

During our most recent visit to this sprawling fertiliser manufacturing plant we could see from the air that demolition was progressing apace. So it seems the right time to bid farewell to the place with an edit combining a complete set of our former explorations there with recent drone footage. The company that formerly operated the plant started trading in the late 1970s in response to the risk of a proposed merger creating a monopoly in the production of fertiliser in New Zealand.

Part One: “Diocletian Allegories” [0:00] High-ceilinged and partially flooded, parts of the compound had the feeling of an ancient Roman bath.

Part Two: “The World As A Machine” [8:14] The generous size of the site felt all-encompassing: an industrial micro-world.

Part Three: “Residual Controls” [14:51] We always enjoy getting our fingers occupied in environments where museum rules don’t apply.
by urbexcentral

Above The Glass

A couple of old chimneys tower over an abandoned glass factory near the village of Krushevo, in the municipality of Sevlievo, in Gabrovo Province, northern central Bulgaria. Gunner thanks his generous and kind hosts, Nicola Miller and Jonathan Taylor.

 

by urbexcentral

Derelict Meat Killing Plant

This plant was closed in 2009 with a large amount of redundancies and has sat vacant ever since with attempts at re purposing the plant failing.

Inside this derelict meat works we found an array of old machinery and relics of a past industry and some incredible, massive old silver lined chillers that felt almost like entering another universe.

Meatworks
Meatworks

Slaughterhouse entrance
Slaughterhouse entrance

Playing with the light
Playing with the light

Presumably where the animals were first brought in to be slaughtered.
Presumably where the animals were first brought in to be slaughtered.

Conveyor belts.
Conveyor belts.

Those meat curtains.
Those meat curtains.

One of the chillers has collapsed.
One of the chillers has collapsed.

Meat board!
Meat board!

The clock used to tick.
The clock has stopped ticking at 5pm, end of the workday.

Offices, left the same as they day they were made redundant.
Offices, left the same as they day they were made redundant.

Old floppy disks
Old floppy disks

Building plans.
Building plans.

Workshop, with a murder chalk scene?
Workshop, with a murder chalk scene?

Control Room
Control Room

More of the Electrical Room
More of the Electrical Room

The Electrical Room
The Electrical Room

Graffiti in the workshop
Graffiti in the workshop

 

by urbexcentral

Station B

This set of images from London’s iconic Battersea Power Station come to us courtesy of our friend Sentinel UE. He writes: We had been looking at doing this for a few weeks. A daytime visit a week before showed the way in. The night came for us to go in, but a text came in saying, ‘Forget about it, the access is locked down.’ We were not prepared to be outdone, and thinking of another possible route headed for that option. Once onto the site it was a fun time trying to read the maps kindly given to us – we had been up all day on another explore and were a bit brain dead – but after a while we sorted our heads out and got sorted with the access points into both Control Room A & B.

Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames. The station ceased generating electricity in 1983, but over the past 50 years it has become one of the best-known landmarks in London. On 7 June, 2012 it was sold to SP Setia and Sime Darby. In January 2013 the first residential apartments went on sale. Construction on Phase 1 is due for completion in 2016/17.  For a previous post on this urbex icon click here.

by urbexcentral

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for Urbex Central. Thanks for watching and stay tuned for 2014…

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 25,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

by urbexcentral

Cockatoo Island 2 – Tunnels

Underneath the Island, in the areas not hewn away to make room for heavy industry, Cockatoo island is criss-crossed with a myriad of tunnels, facilitating the movement of people, materials and equipment across the island. These also served a dual purpose as an air-raid shelter for use in the Second World War: one was even kitted out with an infirmary located in an annex to the main tunnel. Another tunnel has an elevator running right down into it from the buildings atop the island, down through the rock.

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by urbexcentral

Cockatoo Island – Introduction/Teaser

This is the first in a new series of posts focusing on Cockatoo Island, situated in Sydney harbour, with each of these instalments focusing on a different aspect of what cockatoo island has to offer in the way of urban exploration, the video here is a general overview of some of the different features of the island.

During it’s colourful history it has been used as a Military Barracks, Prison/Gaol, Shipyard and Naval Dockyard amongst other things. As a result the island is teeming with reminders of it’s history and is a plethora of abandoned buildings, tunnels, cranes and other structures including a beautiful old power station.

For more information about Cockatoo Island see:
http://www.cockatooisland.gov.au/about/history.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatoo_Island,_New_South_Wales

by urbexcentral

Fertiliser Works

Apparently there is a dog which bites on command at this location, although when we were there we did not encounter this beast.
The location itself has decayed rapidly in the past few years, perhaps it is being slowly demolished by the owners.
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by urbexcentral

Fertiliser Tower

After walking into this fertiliser storage tower we quickly noticed something very wrong, hundreds of dead birds coating the floors. We’re not sure if it was the fertiliser or being trapped which entombed them in the building, but didn’t care to stay and find out.

 

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by urbexcentral

Power

The huge generators in this power station are still fully operational, but it is unlikely that it will ever put another kW of power into the grid as it has been disconnected.
A group of enthusiasts maintain this fantastic example of engineering and occasionally  hold open days, we were lucky enough to be passing by when one of their group was doing maintenance inside and allowed us (and now you) to have a peek at the inner workings.

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by urbexcentral