Company History 
In 1935, during the depths of the 1930s economic depression, the basis from which Hardman Chemicals would stem was established. Acclaimed chemist Alexander Boden, then just 22, responded to an advertisement for a position with a Hardman Research Laboratory located at 1035 Bourke Road, Waterloo. The owner, name unknown, was 'an oldish bachelor' who wanted to build a business for a protégé, Kethel Hardman. Dr Len Atkins, a life-long friend, remembers Hardman as a youngish man, not a technologist, who had set up a business based on contract analytical work supplemented by the recycling of 35 mm movie film, recovering nitrocellulose and silver. The Waterloo premises included a modest laboratory. Alexander expanded the recycling business to the reprocessing of X-ray plates, the recovering of silver from spent fixing fluids, from photographic processors, and of lead from toothpaste tubes. The arrangement with Hardman was short-lived and Hardman left. There was then a fire in the celluloid film plant which the owner had insured well. He told Alex that once he had the insurance money, Alex could have the business. Thus Alex, by then a Registered Analyst, acquired the Hardman business and chose to retain the name. He moved to a laboratory situated above a furrier's overlooking Hyde Park. Alexander began to buy, repackage and sell chemicals. In 1948 Alexander Boden founded Hardman Chemicals Pty Ltd. In 1953 the operation was moved to the site of a former army warehouse in Marrickville. During this period, the company was responsible for the manufacture of a product requiring chlorination chemistry called DDT (p,p'-dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane), the demand for which was just developing. By the early 1970s most of the functions of Hardman had been moved to a 20-acre site at Seven Hills, in western Sydney (the same site at which Hardman Chemicals operates today). The land, a dairy farm, had been acquired in 1961. Production shifted from organics to inorganics, particularly aluminium chloride and chlorhydrate, zinc chloride and zinc ammonium chloride, which became the heart of the Hardman operation. At the time of Alexander Boden’s death in 1993, Hardman Australia had fifty staff members. Products manufactured included aluminium hydroxychloride and aluminium and magnesium hydroxide gel and polyaluminium chloride for adhesives, antiperspirants, liquid stomach antacids, and water treatment; zinc sulphate as a micronutrient for cereals and other crops and, specially formulated, as a treatment for footrot; zinc chloride and zinc ammonium chloride; magnesium chloride for textile processing and adhesives; magnesium hydroxide gel for pharmaceuticals; water-soluble epoxies; and certain moulded road-safety products such as reflective road markers and flexible reflective roadside posts. These manufactures were complemented by an extensive range of indented product lines, while a 49% owned company, Hardman Chemical Industries Pte [SIC] Ltd in Singapore, produced inorganic chemicals for the South-East Asian market. Hardman Today In 2000 the business and premises of Hardman Chemicals was sold to John Bradley, an industrial chemist who has developed and expanded the potable and waste water chemicals division. Most notably, this expansion includes the manufacture of Alchlor-Premium, a polymerized coagulant water treatment that has come about following years of basic research into improvement for a concentrated Polyaluminium Chlorohydrate. In relation to effective water treatment management strategies, Alchlor-Premium is the first of its kind. It is the most cost effective solution for water treatment in $/ML of water treated and unlike Alum the resultant sludge is non-toxic to plant life. Hardman Chemicals now has a 10,000 tonne per annum capacity for the manufacture of potable water treatment and are currently developing a further 30,000 tonnes per annum capacity in the waste water treatment area. Hardman currently distributes and actively markets throughout Australia and New Zealand. Notations I.G Ross, Australian Academy of Science, ”Biographical Memoirs”, 2009. |
