Moshe Novomeysky (Hebrew: משה נובומייסקי, Russian: Моисей Абрамович Новомейский; 25 November 1873 – 27 March 1961) was an Israeli businessman and mining engineer.

He then set about testing the Dead Sea's specific gravity, water and air temperatures, and the practicality of constructing evaporation pans.

Towards the end of 1922 he purchased rights to mine salt at Mount Sodom and sail on the sea from a Bethlehem Arab, along with some disused huts on the northern shore.

In 1924 he founded the Palestine Mining Syndicate, and conducted more geological surveys of the Dead Sea with the British geologist George Stanfield Blake.

Many groups applied; Novomeysky's consortium included a Scotsman named Thomas Gregorie Tulloch who had sought permission to mine there as early as the beginning of the British rule in 1918.

After beating fierce competition from American firms for the right to mine around the Dead Sea, the application was officially accepted by High Commissioner Herbert Plumer in 1927.

British authorities would not allow the Jews to establish villages on nearby government land, but Novomeysky was ultimately granted permission to build a workers' neighbourhood on the basis of his concession.

Seeing potential for the Dead Sea as a vacation place, the British authorities had installed a golf course in Kalia named Sodom and Gomorrah.

Novomeysky felt the limitations in 1933 when he approached kibbutz Ramat Rachel about organising a labour group to expand operations at the expansive Mount Sodom site; while the northern shore had difficult conditions, the southern site was far harsher due to its isolation from civilisation in the heart of the Judean Desert combined with that region's arid climate.

Ramat Rachel contacted the United Kibbutz Movement, which organised a group of 20 who in 1934 travelled to Mount Sodom along with Palestine Potash workers to establish a work camp.

Despite this, on 8 October 1939, at the start of the Second World War, the group was able to set up a kibbutz near Kalia called Beit HaArava, which facilitated successful experiments in raising crops on hypersaline soil.

Novomeysky received permission despite the British White Paper of 1939, which sought to restrict further Jewish immigration into Palestine and prevent new settlements from being built, because the kibbutz was a residence for his workers.

Ben-Gurion couldn't immediately meet him due to preparations for Israel's Declaration of Independence, and when Moshe Novomeysky was injured in an automobile accident, he was unable to attend to finalising the understandings.

Ben-Gurion ultimately ordered Kalia and Beit HaAravah evacuated, and on 19 and 20 May 1948 hundreds of workers, kibbutz members, and the Palmach security contingent fled on a "fleet" of 17 small boats to the Mount Sodom complex, having sabotaged the factory's equipment to prevent the now enemy from using them.

[citation needed] In 1952, the State of Israel established the Dead Sea Works Ltd. as a state-owned enterprise, acquiring all the property of the Palestine Potash Company.