Aplication:Food & beverage cans, Aerosol cans and industrial use
The practice of tinning ironware to protect it against rust is an ancient one. This may have been the work of the whitesmith. This was done after the article was fabricated, whereas tinplate was tinned before fabrication.
The manufacture of tinplate was long a monopoly of Bohemia, but about 1620 the industry spread to Saxony. Tinplate was apparently produced in the 1620s at a mill of (or under the patronage of) the Earl of Southampton, but it is not clear how long this continued.
Despite this blow, the industry continued, but on a smaller scale. Nevertheless there were still 518 mills in operation in 1937, including 224 belonging to Richard Thomas & Co. However the traditional ‘pack mill’ had been overtaken by the improved ‘strip mill’, of which the first in Great Britain was built by Richard Thomas & Co. in the late 1930s. Strip mills rendered the old pack mills obsolete and the last of them closed in about the 1960s.
