Briquette Presses

The spoked handwheel on press number 509 sets the size of the briquettes, the numeral sprayed in blue on the machine's casing, in the briquette factory at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. Red-painted valves and pipework line the left wall of the hall behind the press row, above a series of low timber steps running along the base of the exposed brick. The press stands in its row, the handwheel still set, the blue numeral still readable on the casing. From here, pressed briquettes passed through the wall to the launders, cooling for around 20 minutes before reaching the collector conveyors to be cut for distribution.

The presses were supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract, two factories rated at 2,100 tons a day. The Victorian Heritage Register lists the plant as the only remaining intact assemblage of mid-twentieth-century briquetting machinery in Victoria. Morwell brown coal proved unsuitable for briquetting, high in alkali and sulphur, so Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed these factories. The final briquette feed ran in August 2014. Brett photographed the briquette presses on 15 April 2017, in the closed factory before the demolition program began.