Tinplate

Tinplate in the Swansea Area

The meeting began with a minute’s silence to mark the Armistice which brought hostilities to an end on the 11th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918.

In recent years the Swansea Branch of the History Society has provided ‘outreach’ speakers to history groups in the area.  Mr Peter Rees is one of those speakers and following his highly enjoyable talk last year on the history of copper, the metallurgical theme continued with a talk on the successful relationship which west Wales has with tinplate.

Mr Rees began his talk with explaining that the origins of coating metals with tin for decorative or non-corrosive purposes was ancient and could well extend to 500 BC. However, in a more modern context the centre of the industry in the 16^th century was Bavaria in modern Germany. Craftsmen there had developed a process of using a tilt hammer to flatten the metal, this was then placed in a vat of oatmeal which cleaned the sheet and the process was finished by coating it in molten tin. England alone imported over two million sheets mostly to make plates. Pewter was expensive and wood only used by the poor, therefore Bavarian tinplate was a status symbol in the Tudor home. Henry the Eighth was not happy with the effect this had on the balance of payments and the search was on for producing home manufactured tinplate. The imported ware was known as ‘crooked lane ware’ and providers give us the origin of the name ‘tinker’.

The race was then on to find to found a home produced industry, after all there was plenty of valuable tin to be found in Cornwall. In 1667, several entrepreneurs including John Hanbury visited Dresden. Hanbury needed coal for heat, water for power and ironstone to begin his works and found that Pontypool was the perfect location. Capel Hanbury his son had worked in the woollen industry and had introduced mechanical processes. He in turn invented a ‘mangle’ like device to flatten the sheet, so creating a nascent ‘rolling mill’, thus getting rid of the tilt hammers.  In 1728, Major John Hanbury introduced a modified three cylinder mill which was largely the same as the ‘pack’ mills which remained in use in Wales as late as 1962. There is evidence that Welsh tinplate was getting to be used widely in that Goya used a sheet of tinplate from Pontypool as the base of one his paintings in 1781.

Quickly the industry spread across south Wales and tinworks appeared from as far afield as Lydney to Carmarthen. By 1843, there were 23 works in Wales, but this had almost quadrupled by 1891 to 90 works with the locus of the industry very firmly in the west around Swansea.  Production increased from 4,000 tons in 1801 to 690,000 in 1900, which made it easily the most productive area in the world for tinplate and the global price was set in the metal exchange in Swansea Docks. The expansion was partly due to the evolution of the railway network which made the economic transportation of the raw materials much easier.

Crucial to the development of tinplate was the development of the tin can , which enabled meat and other food to be kept edible.  Initially, canned food had a military purpose since it allowed armies to move unhindered by the need to forage for food while advancing. The American Civil war  took up to 70% of the British production and  the ‘Wild West’ , wagon trains were made possible by the fact that the chuck wagon was full of tins and the plates did not rust.  However, the position was to change dramatically when the USA decided that they wished to develop their own tinplate industry. The McKinley Tariff of 1890 placed a tariff of 50% on all imported goods, but on tinplate it was placed at 70% so causing massive problems to the blossoming Welsh industry (plus ca change.Ed). Ironically, many Welsh workers emigrated  to the US in order to manage the foreign plants around Pennsylvania and Philadelphia (there is a house named ‘Scranton ‘in Neath Road .Ed). Some 36 works closed in Wales, including the famous Dyffryn works in Morriston.

Mr Rees pointed out that the Welsh industry proved resilient. The plants were largely revived by the development of a new canning process by Bliss & Williams which utilised steel from the Elba works and Llangennech tinplate to deform a tin in a press. The advent of the Bessemer process (Dowlais) and the Siemens furnace method ( in Swansea) of producing steel efficiently, sped the development of canning in the area. The main locational pull factor was now the availability of steel in the west of Wales around Swansea.

The next innovation in tinplate once more came from America with the advent of the far larger integrated strip mills, production per man was increased ten-fold and the days of the smaller works ( such as Clyne tinworks Ed) slowly came to an end. The area around Llanelli did indeed make “sospans” and the canning industry had new markets in the corned beef from “Fray Bentos” in Argentina which fed the the troops in the Great War with “bully beef”. Canned fruit from South Africa, more exotic peaches from Australia and even pineapples from Singapore became the regular Sunday tea in Welsh households. 

The new and bigger plants were built in Ebbw Vale , Velindre and Trostre. Today only Trostre survives but is still improving and produces over 10,000 tons of tinplate per day.

Following the lecture, a long question and answer session compared the local aluminium industry at Rheola with the processes in tinplate.

Mr Gwyn Thomas thanked Mr Rees for a very interesting talk, and the Society looks forward to his return next year.