World-first zinc cream Sunscreen among many products of Adelaide's Faulding pharma firm in mid 20th Century
Zinc cream Sunscreen was among the many products still being turned out by Fauldings pharmaceutical company and readied for sale at its Adelaide finishing department (above) in about 1945.
Image by Darian D. Smith, courtesy State Library of South Australia
A world-first zinc cream – from the key ingredient zinc oxide – as a sun screen was invented by the Adelaide pharmaceutical company Fauldings in 1940, among the welter of products it kept turning out in the 20th Century.
Started in 1845 when Francis Hardy Faulding opened a retail pharmacy in Rundle Street, Adelaide, the company prospered under partner Luther Scammell who diversified (even to winemaking in 1876) into creating new products.
Faulding's major innovations were a process for distilling eucalyptus oil development of the test for determining the eucalyptol content of the oil. This was the basis of an antiseptic marketed as Solyptol (soluble eucalyptus oil). Other well-known products were milk emulsion (a pleasant alternative to cod liver oil) Solyptol Soap, (which won a gold medal at the Franco-British Exhibition in London in 1908), Solyptol disinfectant, junket tablets, cordials, essential oil for perfumery and reagents such as Epsom salts, most produced in its factory in the Adelaide western inner suburb of Thebarton on the land once occupied by Bean Brothers.
Faulding’s profilic product output continued into the 20th Century. In 1930, reflecting the company’s national profile, The Daily News in Perth featured F. H. Faulding and Co. Ltd.’s products displayed in the Hay Street window by Foy and Gibson store as: Lemon saline, Marion sauce (a Worcester sauce), Boracic ointments (zinc and carbolic), Solray sunburn cream, Faulding's vanishing cream, Faulding's cold cream, Faulding's lotion (benzoin and almonds), Faulded fly spray, Vimilk emulsion for children, and boronia lines of perfumery, and cordials.
In 1941, the company developed Barrier cream to counter dermatitis in armament factories, and penicillin was produced at its bacteriological laboratory built at Thebarton in 1944. After World War II, Faulding extended its product range and wholesaling, becoming a public company in 1947.
Faulding benefited from technology transfer with overseas companies in return for the Australian rights to their products. The company’s most significant recent achievements were sustained-release drugs, with Eryc – enteric-coated pellets of erythromycin – its most notable success from 1977.