Sulfur was one of Sicily's most important mineral resources, which is no longer exploited. The area covered by the large deposits is the central area of the island and lies between the provinces of Caltanissetta, Enna and Agrigento: The area is also known to geologists as the chalky-sulfur plateau. But the area of mining exploitation also extended as far as the Province of Palermo with the Lercara Friddi basin and the Province of Catania, of which a part of the Province of Enna was part until 1928; it is the one in which sulfur mining, processing and transport took place in the last quarter of the millennium. For a time it also represented the maximum production area worldwide.
History
The harvesting of outcrop sulfur took place even in very ancient times. In fact, mining vestiges have been found dating back to 200 B.C.; it was used in medicine from time immemorial but the Romans also used it for war purposes by mixing it with other fuels.
What set in motion the large-scale exploitation of Sicilian sulfur was the discovery of the Le Blanc method (1787) for the industrial-scale manufacture of soda ash. Sulfur, also a key ingredient in the production of gunpowder, then assumed a strategic importance equal to that held in the modern era by uranium. During the Napoleonic Wars several British capitalists began to take an interest in the open-pit mining areas that were located near the ports of southern Sicily. After the peace and Conservative Order of 1815 various French companies also began their activities in the area due to the development of production and demand for sulfuric acid, which had a further propelling effect on Sicilian ore mining.
Following the Conservative Order, the sulfur industry finally took off, so much so that in the second half of the 1830s exports abroad of sulfur were already found to rank first among those from the island with an annual value of 1,671,500 ducats.
In the years between 1828 and 1830, the export of sulfur to the Marseille factories for the production of soda ash and sulfuric acid reached and exceeded 35,000 tons. Various contingent reasons, including overproduction, meant that from 1830 onward the sulfur industry had ups and downs with rather sustained price fluctuations also due to competition from pyrites mined and processed locally in Central Italy, whose transportation cost was lower. Attempts to establish sulfuric acid and soda ash production industries in Sicily were for various reasons not very successful; in 1838 Ferdinand II had granted the Sicilian sulfur monopoly to the French company Taix & Aycard, which in return promised the development of processing industries and the construction of 25 km of carriage roads a year. However, this choice did not lead to the hoped-for results, as market prices rose excessively, the industrial initiatives were not followed up, and there was stiff opposition from Great Britain, which even threatened to seize Sicilian ships, so in 1846 the agreements to that effect were revoked. The largest importer in 1849 was England, but sulfur was also sold in large quantities to the United States.
The development of methods for using pyrites (of much lower cost) instead of sulfur in the production of sulfuric acid along with the spread of the Solvay method of producing artificial soda ash were decisive in the gradual loss of market share, particularly in Germany and England, resulting in the collapse of Sicilian sulfur prices. Production continued until the end of the nineteenth century but the collapse of selling prices put the entire industry in crisis.
In 1896 the Anglo-Sicilian Sulphur Company Limited was formed in London, a company whose members included Vincenzo Florio, who was its attorney for Sicily, and a group of interested investors including Englishmen Benjamin Ingham and Agostino Porry; the purpose was to revive the marketing of sulfuric acid and sulfur derivatives. Agreements made with the Anglo-Sicilian-Sulphur Co. allowed producers access to credit to finance more modern industrial plants by improving mine facilities. For a time the Sicilian sulphur sector was lifted from the crisis into which it had plunged; prices, which in 1895 had fallen to 56 liras per ton already a few years later, stabilized at 90–95 liras.