The Atjehsche Oliefabriek (the Atjeh Oil Factory) was the small essential-oil distillery established at Tapa-Toean on the Westkust van Atjeh in 1921 for the indigenous distillation of patchouli oil from leaf that until then had been exported raw to Singapore and Penang. The factory was the founding site of the Atjeh patchouli-oil industry and was, by 1931, one of two or three distilleries operating at Tapa-Toean under the management of European residents. The factory’s experimental phase is documented in detail in *Bericht* No. 21 of the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum (April 1925).
Founding (1921)
The Atjehsche Oliefabriek was founded at Tapa-Toean in 1921 under the joint auspices of the Gewestelijk Bestuur van Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (the Regional Government of Atjeh and Dependencies) and the Afdeeling Nijverheid (Industry Section) of the Departement van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel at Buitenzorg. The founding was announced in a letter of 6 August 1921 from the Afdeeling Nijverheid to the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum at Amsterdam, in which the Buitenzorg department explained that, “door samenwerking van het Gewestelijk Bestuur van Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden met de Afdeeling Nijverheid” — through cooperation between the Regional Government of Atjeh and Dependencies and the Industry Section — distillation of essential oil from patchouli leaves was thenceforth to be carried out in Atjeh itself at Tapa-Toean.
The Afdeeling Handel at Buitenzorg, under its head E. de Kruyff, took responsibility for the European side of the operation. The Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij agreed to make an advance of ƒ25 per kilogram of oil, so that the Atjehnese planters would not have to wait five or six months for payment from European sales. De Kruyff himself carried the first Atjeh-distilled oil samples to Europe in the summer of 1921.
The First Phase (1921-1923)
The first distillations of the Atjehsche Oliefabriek, sent to Europe in September 1921, were not of high quality. The three European expert houses — Schimmel & Co. of Miltitz, Roure, Bertrand fils of Grasse, and Polak & Schwarz’s Essencefabrieken of Hilversum — gave conflicting but generally unfavourable verdicts. Schimmel & Co. judged that “ein vollwertiges Konkurrenzprodukt für das Singaporeöl ist aber auch dieses Destillat nicht” — a full-value competitive product for the Singapore oil this distillate is not. Polak & Schwarz judged the odour “zeer matig” (very mediocre). Only Roure, Bertrand fils gave an unqualified favourable judgement, finding both samples “de très bonne qualité” (of very good quality).
By 1923 the factory had fallen into a period of standstill. The first distillations had not produced oil of marketable quality, and the factory had stopped work. The experimental programme was continued by the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum in the form of raw-leaf consignments shipped to Europe for distillation there, while the factory at Tapa-Toean waited for a new operator.
The Van Vreeswijk Take-Over (1924)
In 1924 the Atjehsche Oliefabriek was taken over by Van Vreeswijk, described in the 1925 Bericht as “een Europeaan, aldaar woonachtig” — a European resident at Tapa-Toean. Van Vreeswijk was thus not a visiting expert from Buitenzorg or Amsterdam but a resident of Tapa-Toean: a colonial entrepreneur who had settled in the sub-division and who was prepared to take on the financial risk of restarting the distillery.
Van Vreeswijk’s first act was to ship a baal of patchouli leaf — one pikol — to the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum at Amsterdam, with the leaf “under European supervision selected” so that it could be guaranteed not to be adulterated with foreign leaves, sand, stones and branches, “zooals bij de Inlandsche handelaren dikwijls het geval is” (as is often the case with the native traders). This first baal was of leaf from Loboang Koang, the locality “vlak bij Tapa-Toean” (right by Tapa-Toean), which Van Vreeswijk had bought freshly picked and dried himself.
The Bakongan Discovery
Van Vreeswijk’s letter of 16 August 1924 to the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum gave the discovery that transformed the Atjeh patchouli-oil industry. Having just returned from a trip to Bakongan, Van Vreeswijk reported that the patchouli leaf of Bakongan — grown on the sand-and-swamp conjunction of the Bakongan coastal strip, and dried with the care the Bakongan planters had begun to devote to it — was the finest patchouli-leaf of Atjeh, with an odour “veel sterker dan dat uit eenig andere streek in Atjeh” (much stronger than from any other region in Atjeh). Van Vreeswijk had therefore made up the second shipment — sent end of October 1924 — from Bakongan leaf.
The Bakongan leaf, when distilled by the European houses over the winter of 1924-1925, produced oil uniformly judged to be of equal quality to the best Singapore-Penang product. Schimmel & Co. of Miltitz concluded that the Bakongan leaf was “den Singapore-Patchouliblättern als gleichwertig zu erachten” — to be considered equivalent to the Singapore patchouli leaves. The Dutch factory reported that the oil “ruikt heel goed en komt ons inziens in reuk overeen met goede kwaliteit Penang-olie” — smells very good and corresponds in odour to good-quality Penang oil.
The Handelsmuseum’s Conclusion
The Afdeeling Handelsmuseum’s conclusion, in its letter to Buitenzorg of December 1924, was the obituary of the Singapore-Penang monopoly on prime patchouli: “prima blad, prima olie; op de winning van het goede blad komt het aan! en niet op de nabehandeling te Penang of Singapore.” — Prime leaf, prime oil; it is the winning of the good leaf that matters, and not the after-treatment at Penang or Singapore.
The Commercial Connexions (1925)
In the closing pages of the 1925 Bericht the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum reports that the Atjehsche Oliefabriek — that is, Van Vreeswijk’s factory — was seeking commercial connexions in the Netherlands, and the Handelsmuseum considered it unlikely to be disappointed. Van Vreeswijk had also given the Handelsmuseum the information that, following a conversation with the American vice-consul at Medan in the previous month, a report on the patchouli-culture of Atjeh would shortly appear in the United States. This last remark suggests that the factory’s commercial strategy extended to the international promotion of the Atjeh patchouli industry.
Later History (1931-1932)
By 1931 — as surveyed by Ir. W. Spoon in his *Atjeh Patchouli-Olie* (1932) — there were two or three patchouli-distilleries operating at Tapa-Toean. The Atjeh nilam-oil export had risen to 3,468 kg in 1931, with destinations including Singapore (2,465 kg), Penang (855 kg), Japan (360 kg), the Netherlands (110 kg, the first direct shipment), France (841 kg), Germany (50 kg) and the United States (38 kg). Additional distilleries had been established near Kota Radja and at Meulaboh. The Atjehsche Oliefabriek of 1921 had thus become, by 1931, the founding member of a small Atjeh nilam-oil industry.
Significance
The Atjehsche Oliefabriek is significant for the encyclopedia of Aceh history as the founding site of the indigenous Atjeh patchouli-oil industry — an industry that would, by the early 1930s, export thousands of kilograms of oil annually to European, Japanese and American markets. The factory’s experimental phase (1921-1925) is documented in unprecedented detail in the surviving correspondence between the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum, the Afdeeling Nijverheid at Buitenzorg, and the factory manager Van Vreeswijk — a documentary record preserved in *Bericht* No. 21 of the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum (April 1925). The factory exemplifies the post-pacification colonial industrial-research programme: a state-sponsored enterprise, conducted in cooperation between the regional colonial government, the metropolitan research institute, and a European-resident entrepreneur.
See Also
- Atjeh patchouli experiments (1921-1925)
- Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (1925)
- Atjeh Patchouli-Olie (1932)
- Patchouli-olie industry in Atjeh
- Tapa Toean
- Van Vreeswijk
- E. de Kruyff
- Afdeeling Nijverheid
- Afdeeling Handelsmuseum
- Koninklijke Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut
- Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij
- Schimmel & Co.
- Roure, Bertrand fils
- Polak & Schwarz’s Essencefabrieken
- Bakongan
- Loboang Koang
- Buitenzorg
- Singapore
- Penang
- Medan
- Kota Radja
- Meulaboh
- 1921
- 1924
- 1925
- 1931
- 1932
- Ir. W. Spoon
Source
Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (Noord-Sumatra). Berichten van de Afdeeling Handelsmuseum van de Kon. Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut, No. 21. Overgedrukt uit De Indische Mercuur van 8 en 15 Mei 1925. Amsterdam: Druk De Bussy. OCR-filename: 20260801_233856_DLP-153-Over_patchouly_olie_en_patchouly_blad_van_Atjeh_Noord_Sumatra_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 3, 14, 17-21. Also: Atjeh Patchouli-Olie, by Ir. W. Spoon. Berichten van de Afdeeling Handelsmuseum van de Kon. Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut, No. 71 (Amsterdam: Druk J. H. de Bussy, 1932).