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Sep 18, 2007:
Falkirk Park is a new business/industrial centre which will rise out of the shell of the old Durban Falkirk Iron building on the Bluff in Durban within a few months.
The plan is to add another floor to the single-storey building while refurbishing the entire complex at 394 Bluff Road. This will provide 8 000sq m of space at a cost of about R4,600 per square metre.
The building, the headquarters of the legendary Durban Falkirk Iron Company for many years, is currently occupied by several small businesses.
Pat Witherow of MaxProp, the real estate company handling the sales for a business consortium, said the price was very attractive considering some industrial property on the KZN north coast was being offered at around R5,500 per square metre.
Witherow said the new complex would comprise 11 units suitable for a variety of businesses including light engineering, distribution centres and storage.
The units vary in size between 400sq m and 1 300sq m. Access to the ground floor units will be from Doone Road.
"Six of the units have been sold already so that leaves five which I believe will be snapped up considering the good deals being offered," said Witherow.
The Durban Falkirk Iron Company's history goes back to the early 1900s when the manufacture of hollow building blocks to replace bricks and stone led to the formation in Durban of the Hollow Bock Syndicate Limited.
As business expanded and diversified, the company name was changed to the Iron, Concrete and Asbestos Manufacturing Company with its headquarters in Wentworth.
The company name was changed again to the Iron, Cement and Engineering Company Ltd and became exceptionally famous due to the manufacture of three-legged iron cooking pots.
Later the company joined forces with the legendary Falkirk Iron Company in Scotland and in 1923 a new joint enterprise, the Durban Falkirk Iron Company Limited came into being. The company made products such as coal stoves, pots, manhole covers and drain grates with the company.
Later the company started making electric stoves and later gas stoves and adopted its own distinctive trade mark using Defy as its brand name at its factory in Jacobs.
