The collection, 1927-1962, and undated, totals 1.25 cubic feet (in 2 boxes, 4 Oversized volumes,), and documents the company history of Valley Chemical Company, through meeting minutes, photographs, company history, forms, bylaws, accounts, and stock certificates. All the boxes in the collection are .5 cubic foot letter-size boxes. Loose stock certificates within scrapbooks were collected, sleeved, and placed in a folder in box 2.
The collection is organized by size and then alphabetically and chronologically.
Researchers may also be interested in the Muskegon Rendering Company (Muskegon, Michigan) organizational records, 1937, 1939 which are also housed at the Clarke.
Processing Note: During processing a small number of duplicates and blanks were removed from the collection and returned to the donor as per the donor agreement.
Organizational History:
Valley Chemical Company was founded in June 1927 by main stockholders John J. Hamel (President), William F. Zuigg (Vice President), and William J. Passolt (Secretary) in Saginaw, Michigan.
The business plan was to collect dead animals, bones, fat, and scraps from meat markets, from small plants and farmers and process the materials through a technique called “rendering” to manufacture fat sold to soap companies and dry product to make animal feed. Though main factory operations began in Saginaw in 1927 and operated there through 1941, the company also purchased rendering production assets (factories, offices, machinery, trucks, etc.) in Flint, Durand, Muskegon, Port Huron, and Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
On January 23, 1931 a fire destroyed half of the factory in Saginaw, which closed for production but still operated as offices to collect raw material. A lawsuit and complaints from the local community hindered VCC’s ability to rebuild the damaged plant and continue production, so in July 1932 the center of company operations and production was relocated to Mount Pleasant. Collecting stations in Saginaw, Durand, Muskegon, Manitou, Gaylord, and Ionia sent raw material in trucks to the main production plant in Mount Pleasant, which was located between the Chippewa River and railroad tracks off East Valley and South Mission Roads.
Raw materials were heated in steam jacketed cookers to separate the fat. About six hundred thousand pounds of fat and seven hundred thousand pounds of dry material was recovered during a normal operating month. VCC employed about seventy people for this process, thirty of whom drove the delivery trucks. After 1939 VCC began using the chemical Naphtha to remove fat in the rendering process.
Accessibility issues relating to communication and transportation were an initial problem and business cost. Before VCC had telephone service, Hafer’s gas station, then located on the corner of Mission and Pickard streets, acted as a liaison between VCC and local farmers. The farmers called Hafer’s with the location of dead animals. Mr. Hafer then drove to VCC and told VCC staff where the carcasses were, so VCC truck drivers could take them from the farmers. VCC paid for an existing rail line extension to meet their plant to save the time and money to truck material north to the closest rail line point.
Important people to note related to the company include John J. Hamel (president), who also owned and operated a brokerage business out of Detroit, Michigan. Five of John’s seven sons were involved in either business. With broker contacts to most of the rendering companies in Michigan, he initiated the idea to merge them into one large company which became VCC. His son, John J. Hamel, Jr., took over the brokerage business in 1935 so his father could focus on VCC. William F. Zuigg (Vice President) was plant manager. He earned a degree in engineering from the University of Michigan. He also inherited a small family operated rendering plant in Bay City before helping to found VCC. Paul D. Hamel worked at the original VCC location in Saginaw until he became the office manager at Toledo Tallow Company, of which John Hamel, Sr., was one-third owner. Paul then moved to the Mount Pleasant plant where he was in charge of sales and purchases. Elmer F. Hamel worked at the original Saginaw location before moving to Detroit in 1937 to join John Hamel, Jr. in the brokerage office. Elmer became treasurer of VCC Robert S. Hamel joined VCC at the Mount Pleasant location in 1937. He was killed in a car accident in 1939 (See photographs of wrecked car owned by Paul Hamel in Box 2). By the mid-1940s the company was wholly owned by the Hamel family. The VCC company was sold to a Detroit company in 1961 and the Mount Pleasant plant closed in 1962. (This information is from the collection)
