The Matchstick Factory in Møllegade
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1844 - 1875
Møllegade 515, Aalborg
When Ole Christian Green enters his father, Thore Greens grocery
store in Bredegade 8 (Broad Street) in Aalborg he devotes
himself immediately to one of the future´s new market
initiatives - advertising - and he advertises heavily on what is
happening in the business and in the shop, which then grows
rapidly .
O. Christian Green, who is educated as pharmacist, starts a seal
lacquer factory and he is at age 26 in 1837 Royal Licensed
lacquer manufacturer .
In the grocery shop in Bredegade the sold match sticks in 1841
including
Rohmell & Schüerer´s matches, but Green begins soon after to try
to produce them himself, and in 1844 he buys a property in
Møllegade at the Old Mill and here starts his own manufacturing
of matches .
He advertises in March 1844 after 20 of 30 girls or boys of
respectable parents to make stick boxes, where the by long
practice and hard work can earn 12 to 16 skilling a day.
The advertisement for labor continues over the next couple of
years.
Already in 1845 Green´s factories are almost as big as Rohmell &
Schüerer´s and in 1846 when he , as one of the first in Jutland
, installed a 4 hp steam engine to drive such
as saws and stickmaking machines, it is not long before he
surpasses its competitor in Copenhagen .
Green can see that if his company shall grow further and he
should be able to compete with Rohmell & Schüerer´s advantage of
having short transport to the largest population area in the
capital , he must establish a factory there.
In 1850 he therefore buys an abandoned asphalt plant on the
island of Amager and establishes the same year a match stick
factory here .
He now produces both in Aalborg and in Copenhagen and in 1852
Green agrees with his pharmacist
colleague, Hermann Christian Clausen to rent his factory .
But in 1854 Green draws his skilled factory manager and
engineer developer, Müller to Copenhagen and he sells the match
stick factory in Møllegade to Clausen.
After a sharp decline and almost standstill in 1865
Clausen sells the factory in 1868 to Nielsen and Christiansen ,
but when they cannot pay the agreed purchase price Clausen
must shortly after take the plant back .
Clausen continues the production in the coming years , including
buying Aalborg match stick factory of Ludolph Fog in 1870 and he
continued under that name at the address in Møllegade .
The
factory viewed from the Mill pond
