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Business
competition was intense after WWII and
firms poached key employees to gain
knowledge of new techniques. A mole in the
pay of a leading competitor was discovered
in the Bakery project office and
discharged immediately. My memory is that
he was found getting copies of plans for a
job he was not involved in - always an
obvious give-away. After that those of us
in the project office were instructed to
report on 'other new plant ' we might see
when visiting outside manufacturers. This
met with objection from staff, myself
included, and was not implemented.
Sometimes when a machine was being
manufactured by a third party and the
building of it was being checked on by
project people, a competitor's machine was
being assembled alongside. This happened
with me on Deep Die Trat machine destined
for Carlton. Of course the competitor
could also see the Lyon's machine's
design. Leaving Lyons to work for a
competitor could not be stopped, and this
happened with a colleague working on
Harvest Pie dough development, but if I
remember he only had an hour to leave the
site.
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