William Sandford (26 September 1841 – 29 May 1932) was an English-Australian ironmaster, who is widely regarded as the father of the modern iron and steel industry in Australia.
Early life in England Sandford was born at Torrington in Devon and became an accountant, eventually becoming manager of Ashton Gate Iron Rolling Mills.
Early years in Australia In 1883, he moved to Sydney, employed to organise a wire-netting factory, at what was then part of Five Dock now Chiswick, NSW. At the time of his first involvement in the colonial iron industry, his later views on providing import protection and increasing local manufacturing were already formed.
After visiting Lithgow, he became enthusiastic about the local iron industry and tried to persuade his English employers to buy the Eskbank Ironworks.
He left the wire netting factory, and set up a company (the Fitzroy Iron Company), leased the Fitzroy Iron Works at Mittagong in March 1886—in order to re-roll rails—and commenced production there in August 1886. Initially, Enoch Hughes—another pioneer of the Australian iron industry—was his manager at Mittagong. While there, he had made what was probably the first galvanised iron sheet manufactured using sheet iron rolled in Australia, around September 1886.
Lithgow
Lessee (1887–1891) The rolling mill at Mittagong proved unsuitable and Sandford relocated his operations, in 1887, to the rolling mills of the Eskbank Ironworks at Lithgow, which he leased for the purpose from James Rutherford.
He bought a 2000 acre property at Bowenfels, to the west of Lithgow, and added a second story to the existing house, creating an 11-room home, which he later named 'Eskroy Park'
Ownership, expansion, and tariff protection (1892–1900) In 1892, Sandford purchased the Eskbank Ironworks, using money loaned by the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, and was given a government contract in railway parts. It was a brave move, at a time when Australia was enduring a serious economic downturn. Moreover, he began expanding the plant, in the expectation that protection against imports would be forthcoming.
Around the time he purchased the Eskbank works, Sandford became a vigorous protectionist, leading the Lithgow National Protection Association. The issue of protection against imports was the principal political division of late 19th-century Australia. In New South Wales, almost alone of the Australian colonies, there was widespread support for free trade. A growing force was the Labor Party; it somewhat favoured protection, as a means to maintain relatively high wages, but also advocated nationalisation of major industries, complicating its policy toward enterprises like Sandford's. However, at the 1891 election, it was the protectionists who won office in New South Wales.
A tariff on imported iron was applied by George Dibb's Protectionist government in New South Wales, between 1893 and when it was abolished by the incoming Free Trade government of George Reid in 1895. The tariff had encouraged Sandford to further expand his plant and its abolition was a crucial blow. It threatened the viability of Sandford's new sheet mill and galvanizing plant, which made galvanized corrugated iron sheets. Largely as a result of this experience, Sandford became an implacable opponent of Reid, and stood unsuccessfully, in 1896, as the protectionist candidate for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Hartley.
Free traders were not opposed to a local iron and steel industry; their view was that it could come about, without a protective tariff. The N.S.W Government had offered a large contract for locally made steel rails. A leading free trade businessman and politician, Joseph Mitchell—like Sandford, a strong and tireless advocate for a local iron and steel industry—won the contract, in 1897, but died before he could build his planned large iron and steel works near Wallerawang. Sandford had not tendered; his view was that, without protection, local industry could not compete. Another company G & C Hoskins—owned by brothers George and Charles Hoskins—did tender, unsuccessfully.
In 1899, Sandford attempted to interest his friend Charles Hoskins in buying the Eskbank works but the offer was declined.
Federation, first steel, expansion, Bonus Bill, and Arbitration Court (1901–1904)
With Federation, in 1901, tariffs and duties between the colonies were abolished and the matter of import protection came one for the new Commonwealth of Australia to decide at a national level. With the election of a Protectionist minority government in the new Australian House of Representative, Sandford became optimistic that protection for the iron and steel industry would be forthcoming.
In 1901, he set up William Sandford Limited as a public company—although Sandford himself owned nearly all the shares—and in that same year, Lithgow first produced steel, Although Sandford's Lithgow works was not the first to produce steel in Australia, it was the first to do so in large quantities by using the Siemens-Martin Open Hearth process. The feedstock was either scrap or imported pig iron, since no iron had been smelted in Australia since 1884, when the blast furnace at Lal Lal closed; the original (1875) Lithgow blast furnace had closed in 1882. Also in 1901, he put into operation a new sheet mill.
Sandford, confident that protection—under the Bonus Bill, an act of the new Australian Parliament—was imminent, went to England. He returned in June 1902, with news that he would raise £750,000 of British capital and float a new company, Australasian Iron and Steel Corporation Limited, and hosted an English visitor associated with these plans. He stated that "The intention of the new corporation is to extend the works. Their expansion will materially depend on the confirmation of the Bonus Bill by the Federal Senate, so far as it applies to iron made from Australian ores, and the confirmation of the tariff with respect to iron manufactures."
However, his return to Australia coincided with the effective defeat of the Bonus Bill. Edmund Barton's Protectionist minority government relied upon the Labor Party to pass any legislation. Labor had combined with the opposition Free Trade Party—led by Sandford's Free Trade nemesis, George Reid—to amend the legislation in such a way that caused it to provide less protection than had been expected. Labor wanted a nationalised iron and steel industry and did not want to stimulate the further growth of a privately owned one.
Although Sandford was feted upon his return to Lithgow, his plan for a new and well-capitalised company to expand the Lithgow works was stymied. In 1903, Sandford had to close the sheet mills at Lithgow altogether but continued to make galvanized iron using imported sheets.
Sandford had begun to face financial difficulties due to rising costs, uncertain markets and scarcity of material, and—in his own view—the absence of protection against import competition. He had contested the first federal election, in March 1901, as a Protectionist candidate for Parramatta, but was defeated by Joseph Cook. In 1903, he again ran for the federal parliament, this time against Free Trader Sydney Smith in Macquarie, but he was again unsuccessful.
In 1904, William Sandford Limited settled two disputes with its employees in the N.S.W. Arbitration Court.
State contract, blast furnace, and first integrated steelworks (1905–1907) As steamships came to replace sailing ships, cheap pig iron, in the form of ballast, was being imported less. On a steamship, pig iron would be carried as paid cargo. With a sizable local market, making iron in Australia was becoming more viable.
Sandford and his manager William Thornley were confident in the future of the Lithgow works—provided it had protection—and in 1905 it was making steel fishplates—but not yet rails—for the NSWGR; it also manufactured corrugated galvanised steel sheet, but struggled to do so profitably.
By 1905, Sandford was a wealthy man, with audited personal assets of £141,000, even if much of this wealth was invested in the ironworks. He lived at an estate known as 'Eskroy Park' near Bowenfels, and his ownership of a colliery and land sales in Lithgow gave him income that was more reliable than that coming from the ironworks.
Premier Joseph Carruthers (a Free Trader) persuaded him to agree to William Sandford Limited contracting to supply all of the New South Wales Government's needs for iron and steel, for a seven year period, in 1905. Most of this steel would be in the form of heavy steel rails for railways. A condition of that contract was that local iron ore, coal and limestone were to be used to produce iron, necessitating the erection of a blast furnace.
Sandford embarked on a major expansion, starting with the construction of a large modern blast furnace. On 30 April 1907, his daughter, Clarice, started the blast of the new furnace, and Sandford's proudest moment was when it was officially opened on 13 May 1907. As part of the same expansion, a new 15-ton Open Hearth furnace was added to make steel from the pig-iron, a new fishplate mill commenced operation in 1906, and a short rail branch line laid to the iron ore mine at Coombing Park near Carcoar. The Lithgow works had become the first integrated iron and steel works in Australia.
Sandford had built his new blast furnace some distance from the steelmaking furnaces at the Eskbank works, which has been criticised as a poor decision. However, it was intended to be only the first of four such blast furnaces, feeding a new and larger steelmaking facility nearby, which in turn would feed a line of new rolling mills. Sandford had the general layout of this new plant designed by English consulting engineers, J.H. Harrison, based on earlier advice from an English expert, Enoch James. These plans are proof of the grand vision that Sandford had for Lithgow; his problem was how he could fund it.
A proportion of the iron production was destined to be railed to Sydney for use in manufacture of cast iron products, such as pipes, and the location of the furnace near to the main railway line was logical from that standpoint. However, prior to the foreshadowed expansion, any molten iron destined for steel production needed to be cast into pigs, taken in solid form to the steelmaking plant, and then remelted—a thermally inefficient arrangement that increased steelmaking costs, compared to moving the iron in molten form.
Sandford had constructed the new blast furnace seemingly on his own account—later it was reported that he had used a bank loan of £63,500 to fund it, not his own money—but it was the company William Sandford Limited that held the contract with the government. During the time between the furnace first being lit and the official opening, the company purchased the new furnace and its site from Sandford, paying him £75,683, in the form of 50,000 shares £1 in the company, with the balance to fall due in May 1914 and attracting interest at 5% in the meantime. That arrangement did not really relieve the enormous financial pressure on Sandford personally; it tied his fate more closely to that of the company bearing his name and its ability to fulfill its government contract.
Failure of William Sandford Limited