The British and Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company (BTCIC) was an iron mining and smelting company that operated from 1874 to 1878 in Northern Tasmania, Australia. It was formed by floating the operations of a private company, the Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company that operated between 1871 and 1874.
This venture was the largest of the four that smelted iron from local iron ore in Tasmania during the 1870s. Despite its name, the company was mainly owned by shareholders from the colonies of Victoria and Tasmania, and it used coke rather than charcoal.
The company's operations included an iron ore mine near Anderson's Creek and a railway from the mine to its blast furnace and port near Redbill Point—now part of modern-day Beauty Point—on the West Arm of the Tamar River estuary in Northern Tasmania. Its blast furnace—the largest and most modern in Australia for its time—produced pig-iron June 1876 to August 1877.
Both well-capitalised and well-managed, the BTCIC used well-designed processes and equipment. However, the venture failed, mainly because the chromium content of its iron ore reached levels that resulted in pig-iron of an unsaleable quality. Consequently, planned expansion—such as steel-making—was never commenced.
After the BTCIC was wound up in 1878, the assets were sold to the 'Purchase Company'; the new company tried to overcome the problem of high chromium content, but it eventually broke up and sold the assets at auctions held in June 1883 and February 1885.
There is very little remaining now of this relatively large—for its time—mining and smelting operation. The two company towns, Port Lempriere (the port township and the site of the blast furnace) and Leonardsborough (near the mine site) no longer exist.
Historical context Soon after the first settlement in Northern Tasmania, at York Town in 1804, colonial settlers found that there were extensive deposits of iron ore in the hills to the west of the Tamar estuary. Interest in the area was aroused again by the report in 1866 of the Government Geologist, Charles Gould.
There was an increase in pig-iron prices in the early 1870s, which led to the formation of a number of colonial era iron-making ventures in Australia. The price of imported pig-iron increased, from £4 10s per ton in 1870 to £9 per ton in 1873 greatly advantaging locally manufactured iron. However, this high price did not last long, as iron-making capacity increased and pig-iron was once again imported cheaply as ballast in sailing ships returning from England to Australia.
By 1876–1877, pig iron was being made in both New South Wales—traditionally a 'free-trade' colony—and in Victoria, a 'protectionist' colony. Pig-iron production in Australia was to cease more or less completely after June 1884, when the Lal Lal furnace was extinguished—largely due to import competition—and did not resume until May 1907, when Australia's first modern blast furnace entered production at Lithgow.
The BTCIC was the largest of four ventures that smelted iron from local iron ore in Tasmania during the 1870s; the others were the Ilfracombe Iron Company, the Tamar Hematite Iron Company— both nearby on the Tamar estuary—and the Derwent Iron Company. A fifth venture, the Swedish Charcoal Iron Company never went beyond issuing a prospectus.
Iron ore deposits
The iron ore deposits were two hills lying near on the western side of Anderson's Creek, subsequently called Mt. Vulcan and Scott's Hill. These both lay on Crown land. The iron ore had been discovered by Colonel William Paterson, soon after the first European settlement in Northern Tasmania at nearby York Town. The two hills had been singled out as potential mining sites, by Charles Gould in his report of 1866. The area between the hills was also covered in loose iron ore. Mt Vulcan would be the main source of the company's quarried iron ore.
Characteristics
Geology The iron ore deposit consisted of hematite closest to the surface, with magnetite below that, over an underlying bed of serpentine. A deep bore encountered more magnetite below the serpentine and it seems that there were alternating bands of iron ore and serpentine. The hematite probably had formed from the weathering of the upper strata of magnetite.
Iron content During the early 1870s, assaying of Mt Vulcan iron ore was carried out by eight separate analysts; two in Melbourne, five in England and one in Scotland. The iron content identified in the various assays ranged between 49.5% and 71.8%, with a cluster of results around 60%. Compared with contemporary English iron ore resources, the deposit was a rich one.
Chromium content Only one of the eight analysts who had tested the ore in the early 1870s reported the presence of chromium, and then only as a trace. It seems that the weathered ore closest to the surface may have had a lower chromium content than the deeper ore removed during mining operations.
Later, after production of pig-iron had commenced, it was identified that much of the ore contained 2% to 6% chromium—in the form of the mineral chromite—but other samples had negligible levels.
History of operations
Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company (1871–1874) In October 1867, under the pseudonym "E.H.", Enoch Hughes wrote the first of a series of letters to newspapers extolling Newcastle, N.S.W. as a location for an iron works, complete with estimates of production costs. A later letter written by Hughes on the same theme, in May 1872, influenced the formation of a private company, the Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company, to mine and smelt iron ore in Northern Tasmania.
The two main proponents of the venture, two Tasmanians, James Reid Scott (a local politician) and Thomas Cook Just (a newspaper proprietor and entrepreneur), inspected the iron ore deposit during May 1871. They and three others then each took up adjacent leases of 80 acres—the maximum allowed to one party—together controlling 400 acres that included the ore deposit. Combining with "one or two leading commercial men in Melbourne, represented by Messrs. Lempriere—old Tasmanian residents", they formed the Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company. The share capital was fixed at £80,000, in 40,000 shares of £2 each, every share being paid up to £1, with the remaining amount. being left at call.
Initial operations (1872–1873) The company hired William Leonard as its manager during September 1872. A settlement nearby to the mine was named Leonardsborough in his honour. Mining operations commenced at Mt Vulcan during 1872, and the new mine was one of the first to use dynamite. By December 1872, a wharf had been constructed, 4¾ miles of timber-railed tramway had been laid, buildings erected at West Arm ('Port Lempriere') and Anderson's Creek ('Leonardsborough'), machinery was on order, 50,000 bricks were ready for the kiln, and construction had started on a smelting furnace.
The directors and Leonard were persuaded to adopt the smelting process of Dr William Henry Harrison of Melbourne. Harrison was in the process of patenting an iron smelting furnace, which he claimed reduced fuel consumption and had been proven in America. The furnace, to Harrison's design, was constructed at Leonardsborough. The corner stone of the new furnace—or possibly its chimney-stack—was laid on 6 December 1872, by the Governor, Charles Du Cane. The Governor did this using tools—a trowel and hammer made by blacksmith Peter Massey—smelted from the ore in a "small testing furnace" at Port Lempriere.
When the Harrison furnace was charged on 18 April 1873, the intense heat split the chimney apart. It seems that only a small quantity of iron was made before the damage occurred. This was probably enough to convince the company that the Harrison furnace was not a viable means to produce the large quantities of iron upon which the success of the venture depended. Some saw the Harrison furnace as a "complete failure", and contemporary reports mention a single bar of iron that had been produced in the furnace. Harrison defended his furnace publicly, stating in a letter, "Furnace success, although only half in work, the ore produces splendid iron at once, either malleable, white cast, or grey cast; all of qualities never approached by any samples I ever saw".
Just was later to state that the directors had been deceived about the capabilities of the Harrison furnace, and its failure probably cost William Leonard his position as manager.
Plans for expansion The directors secured the services of Mr Robert Scott—previously manager of the Coltness Ironworks, near Glasgow, Scotland—to investigate and report on the prospects of the mine. Scott would also have been able to see for himself the damaged Harrison direct reduction furnace, and the iron that it had made.
Three bores were made at Mt Vulcan during 1873, to test the extent of the iron ore deposit and assays were made of the ore to determine its suitability
Scott reported favourably on the mine and, as a result, the directors resolved to erect four blast furnaces, a Bessemer steel plant, and rolling mills. Scott was then appointed General Manager of the concern—replacing William Leonard who went on to work for the rival Derwent Iron Company. Scott then left for England—accompanied by one of the companies attourneys—to order new equipment and arrange for it to be shipped to Tasmania.
Acting on Scott's advice, work at the mine site was suspended, apart from cutting timber for charcoal and proving up the size of the ore deposit. Although it was planned to continue what were, by then, being described as "the experiments with the Harrison furnace", the company clearly had changed its preferred approach to iron smelting. Scaffolding was erected to repair the Harrison furnace chimney in May 1873, but nothing much further appears to have been done to pursue the Harrison direct reduction path to iron-making. It is likely that the company had decided to follow a better-proven technology and—perhaps above all else—one that was capable of high-volume production of iron, and ultimately steel. Their decision to use blast furnace technology—rather than persist with Harrison's approach—also may have been influenced by the erection of a blast furnace for the rival Ilfracombe Iron Company around the same time, but it is also a fact that semi-solid sponge iron—such as produced by direct reduction—would not suit the new long-term plan to feed a Bessemer converter and make steel.
Harrison did not take these changes well and continued to defend his process, making the very unlikely claim—in a self-serving letter to the Government Geologist W.H. Twelvetrees in 1902—that his furnace had produced "a considerable quantity of high grade steel" during its brief operation.
British and Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company (1875–1878) A new public company with more capital was needed to fulfill the plans for expansion. Despite its name—The British and Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company— a majority of the new company's shareholdings were held in Victoria and Tasmania. The subscribed capital of the company was £250,000, of which about two-thirds were held in Victoria. Of this amount, about £50,000 has been paid up.
The main intended market for the BTCIC, was Victoria, and Melbourne in particular, but the Victorian colonial government imposed a duty on imports of manufactured iron items—such as iron wire, nails, bolts and nuts—including those from other Australian colonies such as Tasmania. This meant that initially, the new company would need to make sales of pig-iron in order to establish viable operations. However, the company remained vulnerable to any extension of Victorian import duties to cover pig-iron.
Large-scale operation