In the 19th century Llanelli became known as ‘Tinopolis’.
It was the thriving, bustling centre of tinplate production. The tinplate industry developed in Wales in the early 1700s and by the 19th century more than 80% of the world’s tinplate came from South Wales.
Tinplate was produced in other places but Llanelli became a major world centre of the industry. Llanelli tinplate was exported all over the world with most going to the USA, but it was a boom and bust industry.
Workers were relatively well paid but in times of recession works were often closed. In 1891 the USA introduced the McKinley Tariff which added one third to the cost of imported tinplate and contributed to the decline of the industry in Wales.
In Carmarthenshire the first works were established at Kidwelly in 1737 followed by Dafen in 1846. Llanelli offered attractive conditions for tinplate works to the industrialists and local investors – flat areas of land, low rental prices, good water supply and access to raw materials.
However, inside the tinplate works conditions were poor. People worked in temperatures up to 38°C and men might drink up to 40 pints of liquid during an 8 hour shift. It was heavy, dangerous, noisy and dirty work. The air was full of noxious fumes and workers provided their own protective clothing or faced horrific injuries.
Many women were employed in tinplate working as openers and in the pickling, rolling, polishing and packing departments. Women openers discarded defective plates as waste and the term ‘wasters’ was applied to describe men who were lazy and up to no good. Young people, often as young as 13 years, were used as a source of cheap unskilled labour and generally employed in packing, cold rolling and cleaning. Tinplate might employ whole families at various stages of their lives.
Tinplate was produced from strips or bars of first iron and later steel and coated with tin to protect the steel from rusting. The rolling and preparation of the steel sheets was a long process which took about 160 hours and was carried out by workers given names which described their tasks. The mill teams were skilled workers and had to develop real understanding between themselves and exact timing and precision if serious injury was to be avoided.
For example, a hot metal sheet could spring back and give the ‘doubler’ a life changing injury (‘doubler’s cut).
This is a simple description of a complex process:
Steel bars are placed in a hot furnace;
The bars are put through hot rollers until they are the required thickness;
One man (the “doubler”) folds the sheets ready for trimming;
The sheets are placed into baths of acid for cleaning. This is called “pickling”;
Then it’s back to the furnace to strengthen the sheets. This is called “annealing”;
After cooling the sheets are placed through cold rollers to make them more even;
Off to the tin house to be coated with hot molten tin;
Finally the sheets are polished before packing.
For a fuller illustrated description see the following article: https://pembreyburryportheritage.co.uk/home/ashburnham-tinplate-works-2
Tinplate had many different uses from the preservation of food to domestic items such as pots and pans, fuel cans, some children’s toys, roofing and decorative panels. The first tinplate beer cans in Britain were filled in Felinfoel Brewery. Today Tata Steel in Llanelli continues to coat steel for use in food and drinks cans, aerosols and paint tins.
It is also possible to see at least one reminder of the tinplate industry in the town in the remains of the tinning house of the Old Castle Tinplate Works, close to Millennium Coastal Path, Sandy. It was named after the 12th Century Castle Carnwyllion which stood nearby. The works made tinplate from 1867-1957.
Also outside the Ffwrnes Theatre in Llanelli is a bronze statue dedicated to the men and women of the tinplate industry. It depicts a furnace man skidding a sheet of hot steel across the mill floor while the female ‘opener’ is separating sheets from a pack.
Further afield, in Kidwelly a museum stands on the former site of the Kidwelly Tinplate Works, closed in 1941 and in Burry Port the site of the Ashburnham Tinplate now houses the Parsons Pickles factory.
