The Growth of the Australian Iron and Steel Industry

Abstract

Between 1929 and 1939 the production of pig iron and steel ingots in Australia increased threefold an the capacity of the iron and steel industry increased by an even greater amount. The production of pig iron from the then existing plants (The Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd., at Newcastle, Hoskins Iron and Steel Works, at Lithgow, and Australian Iron and Steel Ltd., at Port Kembla) was 461,110 tons in 1928-29. By 1939 it had increased to 1,243,393 tons. Over the same period the production of steel ingots increased from 432,773 tons to 1,263,878 tons. There is a remarkable story behind these substantial increases. In spite of the efforts of the pioneers who had struggled for many years to establish iron and steel smelting in Australia, the industry can scarcely be said to have existed in 1915. Only one town, Lithgow, on the mountainous western coalfield of New South Wales and about 100 miles inland from Sydney, had managed to sustain a smelting industry of sorts for any length of time. Cheap and plentiful fuel here gave the industry its initial impetus; later it was kept alive and even expanded, partly by the tenacity and optimism of its owners and partly by assistance from the government. But Lithgow too in due course went the way of former inland smelting centres. Its inferior position, for the assembly of raw material and for the distribution of finished products, reduced its chances of becoming a prosperous centre. Its production had never been large and the output in its best year was only a fraction of the total Australian demand. Long before 1929 the owners of the Lithgow plant had realized that they were ill-placed to compete with an iron and steel plant on either of the coastal coalfields of New South Wales?the Hunter Valley field to the north of Sydney or the Illawarra field to the south?and when such a plant was set up at Newcastle in 1915, at the seaward end of the Hunter Valley Field, the Lithgow owners at once put in motion the first stages of a plan which culminated in 1928-30 in the migration of the industry from the valley. A new site for blast furnaces and steel plant was found at Port Kembla on the Illawarra Coalfield and, with the passing of Lithgow, Australia lost its only inland centre of heavy industry. All subsequent developments have occurred at or near tidewater and are an expression of coastal influences. Lithgow's rise and fall belong to an early phase in the history of the industry and it had all but vanished from the scene in 1929. But the gap was more than filled by its Port Kembla successor, Australian Iron and Steel Ltd., which together with the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd.,a at