Store Extension

An extension built onto the parts store at Kandos Cement Works runs at right angles to the main building, holding the larger items that would not fit on the regular shelving. The floor is concrete, stained from decades of leaked lubricants and machine oil. Heavy steel racking lines both long walls, with shelves spaced to take crated bearings, drive components, and lengths of pipe. A row of overhead lights runs the length of the bay; most of the fittings have failed. The ceiling is corrugated iron on steel trusses, with patches of insulation hanging loose where rodents or water have worked at it. A roller door at the far end opens onto the yard. The space holds a working coolness even in summer.

The extension was added at some point in the plant's later operational decades to accommodate inventory that had outgrown the original store. Cement works of Kandos's scale stocked an enormous range of replacement parts: large electric motors, gearboxes, bearings for the kilns and mills, conveyor drive components, and lengths of pipe and ducting for in-house fabrication. The plant closed in September 2011 after 95 years of cement production. The store extension was emptied of high-value items in the months that followed, but the racking, the larger fixtures, and a residue of low-value parts have stayed in place since.