The Shemen enterprise has a central role in the story of Haifa’s early Hebrew-speaking industry in the dawn of the 1910s and the city's branding as a blue-collar belt. This soap and other petroleum-excess extraction factory can have its name simply translated as “oil”, and that name was extended to later identify the entire flatland adjacent to the south shore of the HFA Bay, namely “Hof Shemen” (Oily Beach).