The Colonial Ammunition Company (CAC) was an ammunition

Ammunition

Ammunition is a generic term derived from the French language la munition which embraced all material used for war , but which in time came to refer specifically to gunpowder and artillery. The collective term for all types of ammunition is munitions...

 manufacturer in Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. It was established by Major John Whitney with government encouragement in 1885 during the Russian Scare

Panjdeh Incident

The Panjdeh Incident or Panjdeh Scare was a battle that occurred in 1885 when Russian forces seized Afghan territory south of the Oxus River around an oasis at Panjdeh . The incident created a diplomatic crisis between Russia and Great Britain...

. The first ordnance manufacturer in Australasia

Australasia

Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes...

, it later expanded in other business directions from 1925 on. In the Second World War, it was New Zealand's only industrial manufacturer of ammunition (having temporarily increased its workforce from 230 to 900), with production in countries like Australia having long since overtaken the small size of the New Zealand market for ammunition.

Facilities

The company operated extensive facilities in Mount Eden

Mount Eden

Mount Eden is the name of a cinder cone and surrounding suburb in Auckland City, New Zealand, situated five kilometres south of the city centre. The mountain is the highest natural point in the whole of Auckland...

, a central suburb of Auckland (originally on the outskirts of the city). The area is now mostly taken up by commercial redevelopment. Remaining from the original facilities are two iconic structures:

• A rare steel frame shot tower
  Shot tower
  thumb|The Shot Tower, Bristol, EnglandA shot tower is a tower designed for the production of shot balls by freefall of molten lead, which is then caught in a water basin. The shot is used for projectiles in firearms.-Process:...
  
   for the creation of lead pellets. It was built around 1916 to allow the company to produce lead pellet
  Lead shot
  Lead shot is a collective term for small balls of lead. These were the original projectiles for muskets and early rifles, but today lead shot is fired primarily from shotguns. It is also used for a variety of other purposes...
  
  s. Used in the shotgun
  Shotgun
  A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...
  
   shells of New Zealand hunters, they had previously been imported, mainly from the United Kingdom. The tower was erected by local blacksmiths W. Wilson and Company and initially operated by a Mr Lylie with his two daughters (who had previously been supplying CAC with limited quantities of shot from Nelson
  Nelson, New Zealand
  Nelson is a city on the eastern shores of Tasman Bay, and is the economic and cultural centre of the Nelson-Tasman region. Established in 1841, it is the second oldest settled city in New Zealand and the oldest in the South Island....
  
  ). The tower remained in profitable operation until after World War II, when it allowed the company to keep production levels high after military ammunition requirements dropped off again. The tower is the only 20th century shot tower in Australasia and the only remaining shot tower in New Zealand. It is now classified as a Category I heritage building by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust
  New Zealand Historic Places Trust
  The New Zealand Historic Places Trust is a non-profit trust that advocates for the protection of ancestral sites and heritage buildings in New Zealand...
  
  , having been saved from destruction in the 1980s after popular protests.
• A compact but massive bluestone
  Bluestone
  Bluestone is a cultural or commercial name for a number of dimension or building stone varieties, including:*a feldspathic sandstone in the U.S. and Canada;*limestone in the Shenandoah Valley in the U.S...
  
  building now used as a bar / restaurant.

External links

• C.A.C. bar & eatery (now occupying a remaining heritage building)