Return to index page

Tin Box and Can Manufacturing

A coating of tin gives iron or steel a corrosion resistant shiny surface and 'tinplate' was widely used from the early 19th century for decorative goods and cheaper makes of cutlery. Tinned metal sheet boxes offer protection from damp and vermin and thin tinned metal foil was used to line wooden boxes of ammunition to keep the powder dry.

Tin boxes were made using thin tinned iron or steel sheet, bent up to shape and soldered together. Huntley & Palmers, the biscuit company, came up with the idea of using tinned metal boxes for shipping biscuits and set up a company, Huntley, Bourne and Stevens, to make the boxes in the 1820s. Called 'stock boxes' these were the steady year-round trade for the tin box makers and up to the 1950's most biscuits were sold by weight from these large square shaped tins. These stock boxes were roughly a foot cube, the lid was formed in the same way and fitted over the open end of the base. The box was covered with a simple paper wrapper, the wrapper was glued to the container and overlapped the edges of the top, serving as a seal as well as holding the lid in place.

The invention of offset lithography in the 1870s allowed decorative printing directly onto the tin, without the use of a paper label, and this became a popular way of selling decorative tins for goods such as biscuits and tea.

Bryant & May (the match making company) held a key patent on the use of offset lithography (developed in the 1870s) for printing directly onto the tin sheet (which expired in 1889) and for a time Huntley, Bourne and Stevens owned the sole rights to this process which allowed them to print directly onto the metal without using a stuck-on paper label.

The boxes, printed or otherwise, were commonly supplied to the customer as a 'flat pack' which their own workshops would assemble into the containers. This saved a lot of money on shipping as the flat sheets could be easily boxed, took up a lot less room and were much less liable to damage in transit.

The tobacco companies were big users of tins but sealed tins could not be used as opening the tin damaged the cigarettes. In 1888 a Mr. Williamson patented a simple cutter which could be built into a tin lid. This allowed a tubular tin to be sealed with very light metal with a removable lid on top, rotating the lid operated the cutter. This proved a boon to the cigarette firms, notably the largest firm in Britain Rickets Wills & Co (which became WD & HO Wills).

As well as tin boxes for goods such as biscuits, mustard powder, cigarettes and tea there is also the matter of tin cans for preserving food.

Preserving food by bottling and heating using air tight glass containers was invented by Franscois Appert, a Parisian confectioner, in 1810. Appert's discovery was taken up in England by John Hall, founder of the famous Dartford Iron Works, and his associate Bryan Donkin in 1811. They started using glass bottles but went onto develop metal canisters made of tinned iron to store the food. The world's first `canned' food was made in their new factory set up in Bermondsey, London.
Some sources cite an Englishman by the name of Peter Durand as the brains behind the metal containers.

Tinned foods appeared in the shops by 1820 but they were very expensive and were mainly used as emergency supplies by the military and people on expeditions. By the time of the First World War the tinned food industry was starting to develop (driven by the Americans, who had built their industry up to feed the soldiers in the American Civil War)

For many years tin cans were all made the same way, a three piece assembly consisting of a strip to form the tube (which could be round or square) and two ends, these were soldered together to make the tin. A skilled worker could make about six cans an hour. The tins were sold already formed into a tube and with the bottom plate in place, the contents were added, the lid soldered on and the whole thing cooked or 'pasteurised' to kill any remaining bacteria. Up to the 1930s most British tin cans were sold to housewives for 'home canning' (one slogan was 'Eat what you can, can what you can't').

The early cans were made of fairly thick metal (iron sheet) which was dipped in liquid tin to coat it. The resulting tin cans needed a hacksaw or hammer and chisel to open them. The 'key' opening tin can was developed in America in 1867 but the can opener for ordinary cans was not commercially available until about 1914 (people tended to use a sharp knife to puncture the lid and work their way round the edge cutting through the metal).

Iron was replaced by steel and in the 1930s, electroplating began to replace hot dipping as the way to apply the tin. Also in the 1930s the 'sanitary' tin was introduced where the seams were formed by folding and pressing the metal in a machine, solder only being used on the outside of the can. The greatly speeded up the production of empty tin cans and reduced the amount of lead the users were exposed to (one arctic expedition is said to have failed in part because of lead poisoning from tinned foods).

---

Modelling a tin can or box factory

Tin can manufacturing, and the food canneries they supplied, both benefited from a rail connection for delivery and despatch. Metal Box & Printing Industries opened their factory at Perry Wood in May 1931 close by the Worcester to Oxford line, from which they had a rail connection into the works.

There are no distinctive buildings or structures associated with making tin boxes or cans, any moderately large factory building will serve for a layout. The illustration shows the metal Box factory at Briton Ferry, opened in the mid 1930s close to their tinplate factory at Eaglesbush, near Neath. In the 1980s this became the first factory in Europe to make ring-pull cans.

Fig ___ Metal Box factory at Briton Ferry



Some can making firms tried building assembly plants close by the consumer, this saved on shipping costs as the tins were shipped flat, packs of sides and packs of lids and bottoms. The bulky completed tins with separate lids were then shipped the short distance to the customer.

There is little scope for unusual traffic to and from a tin can works, but having all the industries on a layout using weird and wonderful rolling stock tends to look odd, a tinplate works would dilute the unusual traffic with regular open wagons and vans.

The principal inward traffic would be van loads of tinned sheet,the coopers at the tinplate works would make up the boxes to suit the size of plate being ordered, but these cases were not terribly strong and the cargo required careful handling. The most common standard wooden box of tinned sheets was 14 inches by 20 inches and held 112 sheets of tinned metal. Each sheet weighed in at about a pound or 0.5Kg, so the box weighed about a hundredweight (about 51Kg) and could be handled by one man (with difficulty). The illustration below shows a man with some kind of works trolley moving cases of tinplate in 1930.

Fig ___ Trolley for tinplate boxes




Several tinplate firms operated their own railway vans in the pre-grouping era, I believe some remained in service into the early 1930s (see also 'General Engineering Industries - Tinplate').

Fig ___ Tin-plate manufactures vans

In photographs from the mid 1950s I have seen pale wooden boxes of tin plate, about three foot by two foot by about ten inches deep with a couple of three inch square battens on the base to allow fork-lift handling.

Coils of tined metal were being shipped by the later 1930s, presumably for the tin can makers, the pictures I have seen show coils about three feet wide and about two feet in diameter. By the mid 1950s tinplate from the newer large works was shipped out in much larger coils as shown below, in transit these wagons would be sheeted.

Fig ___ Loading tin-plate coils at the tinplate works


Outgoing would be the empty containers, in some cases these were shipped in re-usable wooden boxes, sturdy affairs with external bracing. These could be 'knocked down' at the customers end and returned to the tin makers works.

British Railways was open to requests from good customers for specialised rolling stock and Metal Box Ltd (now Carnaudmetalbox plc) was one such customer. They regularly shipped empty cans (and lids) to soup factories and British Railways built a hundred vans with no side doors and doors in only one end for this traffic. Modelling these vans is discussed under 'Goods Rolling Stock Design - BR Designs'.

Fig ___ Metal Box tin can van

---

Tin Box and Can Makers

As noted above one of the first large scale tin box makers was Huntley, Bourne and Stevens, set up to make biscuit boxes in the 1820s.

Although a lot of smaller firms produced a range of goods (cutlery and 'fancy goods' as well as containers) the tin boxes and cans were the backbone of the industry and there were quite a number of companies involved in this trade. One example being the Liverpool Tin Canister Co (established in the early 1880s) who produced a range of tinplate containers, plain and decorated and also made up empty tin cans. There were some experiments going on in the industry, the Maconochies Solderless Tinning Syndicate was set up in 1901, the name changed to the Solderless Tin Co a few years later, but I haven't been able to find out what their secret was.

The point being that you can invent your own tin can manufacturing company if you wish.

One of the most important firms was probably Barclay & Fry, who produced tin boxes, mainly for biscuits and the like. They invested in lithographed decorative tin box production and the business thrived, mainly on the back of the biscuit industry (the decorative printed boxes were at the premium end of the market). From the 1850s Barclay & Fry used their patented process to print paper as well as tins. The firm had been printing cheques since the 1880s (for a relation of Mr Barclay who owned a small bank called Barclay's).

Barclay & Fry produced empty tin cans for people to use at home for home preserving of seasonal foods on the basis of 'Eat what you can and can what you can't eat'. Commercial canning of foods was a small scale industry in the UK and for the company this business was almost a side line. In America the Civil War saw the rapid expansion of the tinned food industry to support the war effort. After that war American farmers began producing foods specifically for canning and commercial canneries developed rapidly.

In Britain tins of Californian fruit were a common commodity by the 1920's, and commercial canning was on the increase. In the later 1920's the Americans began looking toward expanding in this country and established the British Tin Company. Barclay & Fry saw this as a threat and had to work out a deal with the American firm Continental Can Company to set up in competition, in the end they forced the Americans out of the British can market.

Hudson Scott, based in Carslile, was originally a printing firm who began making metal tins in the later 19th century (closely associated with Carr's biscuits). They merged with Barclay & Fry in 1922.

In the slump following World War One there was a rationalisation of the industry, several firms merged and others went bust. In 1921 several large firms, including Barclay & Fry and Hudson Scott, merged to form 'Allied Tin Box Makers', better known today as Carnaudmetalbox plc. Over the years this company has been known as 'Metal Box and Printing Industries' (from 1922), 'MB Group' (by the late 1970s), MB-Caradon (late 1980s) and Carnaudmetalbox plc (from 1989). As well as making tin cans this firm was involved in the printing industry, mainly producing cheques for banks (the printing side remained important, accounting for about half the profits of the firm in the 1960's).

In the mid 1920s Metal Box came to an arrangement with the American firm Continental Can (as part of a strategy to avoid a take over by another US firm, American Can) and they then bought out the US rival's British arm (British Can) and established themselves as the main UK company in the business. Following World War Two the company invested in paper and plastic packaging technologies as well as the metal can business. In the 1970s they diversified further into areas such as central heating, but they were then hit hard by the recession. In 1989 they became Carnaudmetalbox and the tin can side of the business was sold off under that name.




^
Go to top of page