Hong Kong Originals: The 85-year-old flask brand that bears witness to rise and fall of city's manufacturing era
As Hong Kong's economic boom faded and manufacturing moved to China, some long-established, family-run companies preserved their traditions as others innovated to survive. In our new series, HKFP documents the craftsmanship and spirit behind the goods that are still proudly 'Made in Hong Kong,' as local firms navigate the US-China trade war.
Few guests staying at the Camlux Hotel in Hong Kong would know that a giant glass furnace once lay beneath where they are spending the night.
The Kowloon Bay hotel was formerly the factory building of Camel, an 85-year-old local metal kitchenware brand.
The company moved into the premises in 1986 and vacated the property in 2013. Four years later, Camel opened a hotel in its place as part of a government revitalisation plan for the industrial district.
Speaking to HKFP at the hotel on Monday, Raymond Leung – Camel's third-generation director – said his grandfather, Leung Tsoo-hing, founded the company Wei Yit Vacuum Flask Manufactory in 1940 after seeing a demand for vacuum flasks.
Back then, electricity was a luxury, and few households had fridges and kettles. An insulating container thus emerged as a common household item for keeping drinks hot or cold.
'Being Chinese, being Asian, we drink a lot of hot drinks,' the younger Leung said, adding that his grandfather – who had been exporting vacuum flasks from Hong Kong to Penang, Malaysia – 'wanted to create his own brand of thermal flasks.'
The brand name 'Camel' was chosen to reflect the flask's function and the company's resilience.
Camel became one of the few manufacturers to make flasks with an inner glass wall allowing the container better insulation than those with just a metal body, said Leung, 47.
Over the years, Camel has sold vacuum flasks, coffee tumblers, water bottles, food jars and more, discontinuing some products and launching others as consumers' preferences shifted alongside the changing times.
Its products are not only available at shops and department stores in Hong Kong but are also sold in Southeast Asia.
Camel is the only vacuum flask brand still being manufactured in Hong Kong, Leung told HKFP.
Throughout its 80-plus-year history, Camel has gone through landmark moments in Hong Kong's history, including the Japanese invasion during World War II, which halted its production, and the post-war manufacturing boom.
When Leung's grandfather created the first vacuum flask prototype in the 1940s, its parts – from the glass walls to the rubber connecting pieces – were sourced in Hong Kong.
Today, like many of the city's homegrown brands, part of Camel's production takes place across the border in mainland China – a move that is neither new nor avoidable, the director said.
Former manufacturing hub
Hong Kong saw its manufacturing heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, with factories – concentrated in areas such as Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok, Kowloon City and Western – producing everything from clothes and toys to watches and electronics.
Its rise as an export-oriented economy came amid World War II's destruction of industrial bases in Europe and America. Hong Kong seized the opportunity, resuming production and supplying goods to the world.
The director's father, Philip Leung, studied engineering in the UK and later completed a postgraduate degree in glass technology. He returned to the city in the 1960s, when he was in his late 20s, to help with the family business.
'He wanted to bring back the knowledge from the Western world,' Raymond Leung said.
Under Philip Leung's leadership, Camel ramped up its manufacturing, expanding its production of metal flasks, ice buckets, and plate covers to supply hotels around the world.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Hong Kong's manufacturing industry began losing its edge to mainland China, as the latter modernised under the government's reform policies.
Many companies in the city relocated their production across the border, attracted by cheaper labour and other costs, but the Leungs stayed put. While minor parts were sourced from mainland China, Camel products' main components were always made in-house.
But over the decades, it became clear that it would not last.
In 2006, Camel turned off its glass furnace, which was operating on the third floor of what is now the Camlux Hotel, for good. The company was unable to find enough people to operate the furnace after some of its workers passed away.
'Because it's a furnace, you can't turn it off. It has to run 24 hours, otherwise the glass will solidify,' Raymond Leung said. 'We didn't have enough people to fill a day's shifts.'
'It would've been a natural end to Camel, but we discussed it as a family, and my father wanted to persevere,' he added.
'So we had to source the glass from the mainland. [It was] better than just quitting,' he said.
The company now checks the glass and all its other raw materials before assembling the products in its factory in Hung Hom. Meanwhile, at Camel's other factory in San Po Kong, workers are in charge of cutting large pieces of metal and moulding plastic.
Moving on
Leung said Camel's reality was no different from many brands, whether in Hong Kong or abroad.
'Even something like BMW and Mercedes, which are synonymous with Germany, it's very rare you can make a complete product without some kind of [overseas] supplier,' he said.
The director, however, says the company still tries to promote Hong Kong 'as much as possible.'
Over the past two years, Camel has hosted design competitions inviting the public to submit Hong Kong-themed illustrations. The winning designs were printed onto Camel's signature flasks and added to the company's product collection.
Last year's first-place prize went to a red, white and blue design – a nod to the traditional Hong Kong nylon canvas bags – that featured the city's icons, including a pawn shop sign, a cha chaan teng cup, and the city's tram.
'Doing the competitions is a way for us to engage more local talent,' Leung said.
People have asked Leung if Camel, with such a long history, would reissue some of its 'nostalgic' products – like the big flasks for households that were common in the past.
The director said he 'wasn't completely against' the idea, but he preferred the company to innovate new products instead.
In recent years, Camel has launched coffee tumblers and sports water bottles inspired by new trends in the market.
'You can't always go back to your archive,' Leung said. 'You have to move on.'
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