Industry
In 1884. Charles Stewart Parnell rented Big Rock townland from his cousin William Proby, Earl of Carysfort, and commenced quarrying. Parnell was also a supporter of the Arklow harbour scheme. The Parnell quarries closed in the 1920s.
In the early part of the 20th century, a large munitions factory, Kynoch, was established on the north side of the town. This factory employed several thousand workers during the First World War but closed shortly after it, all production being moved to South Africa. 17 workers were killed in an explosion at Kynoch in 1917. The town is also famous for its pottery (which eventually closed after first being taken over by Noritake) and for its shipbuilding industry.
In the 1960s, a state-owned fertiliser factory, Nitrogen Éireann Teoranta, later Irish Fertiliser Industries, was established on the outskirts of the town. This factory complex comprised a number of chemical plants and manufactured a range of fertilisers from basic raw materials. It was one of the first major chemical plants in Ireland and contributed to the present-day success of the Irish chemical industry. It closed in 2002.
There is still a good industry base in Arklow, with Servier and Allergan still remaining, just two of the biggest manufacturers in Arklow. Allergan confirmed on the 30 January 2008 that they will move their production to Costa Rica. This will take place over the next two years.
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Famous quotes containing the word industry:
“For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull.”
—Ralph Nader (b. 1934)
“As our boys and men are all expecting to be Presidents, so our girls and women must all hold themselves in readiness to preside in the White House; and in no city in the world can honest industry be more at a discount than in this capital of the government of the people.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)
“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)