"James Cumming, with experience owning and operating blacking mills in Scotland, migrated to Australia and founded James Cumming & Sons in Sydney in 1909. Assisted by Jack Lang, later a New South Wales Premier, the Cumming family bought land on Parramatta Road, Auburn and initially supplied blacking for steelworks, then expanded into industrial minerals. In the 1980s, steel production changes phased out blacking. Motivated by government water filtration mandates, James Cumming & Sons established a plant and started manufacturing industrial filter media."