Saline Salt Company Essay Example

of evaporation. This process consists of conducting seawater into large shallow “pans” – that is, fields surrounded with dams and having a hard sand bottom.

When the outlet of the pan is closed, evaporation takes place under the influence of the sun and drying winds, and after a while, gypsum separates out. When most of this has been deposited, the water is conducted into another pan, where evaporation continues until a large part of the common salt (sodium chloride) has separated out. Then the remaining dense liquid, which is called “mother liquor”, is drawn off and either returned to the sea or further evaporated for rarer salts.

The two young men raised enough funds to erect four such pans and to operate their business for six months. Each pan had a capacity of 900,000 cubic feet of water, and each was capable of producing 805 tons of salt at each operation. A complete process of evaporation took a month. Silver Salt Granulating Company bought the first salt produced by the new company and offered to buy all the salt, which they could produce. Lawrence and Stephens accepted the offer.

This arrangement continued until 1961, when the Silver Salt Granulating Company informed Lawrence and Stephens that they needed more salt because of steadily rising sales. One other producer was willing to supply the salt, but he insisted upon such a large contract that it might be necessary to reduce purchases from Saline Salt Company. Since Saline had been a satisfactory supplier of Silver Salt for years, the Silver Salt Company wished first to give Saline an opportunity to expand its own production to the extent that purchases from another

company would not be required.