[TheForge] Iron Bridge

[Dave Smucker]

Mike,  I worked for ALCOA (32 years) Aluminum Co. of America.  We had a plant near Swansea in south Wales.  The plant had been built in the years before WWII and was important in the war effort for making aircraft sheet.  In the 50's ALCOA bought into the plant and later took a 100 percent ownership.  In the mid 70's ALCOA decided to produce aluminum (aluminium for you Canadians) can sheet for the European Market.  We built a new hot line, cold mill and finishing line using technology never used before for can sheet.  It was a complete disaster and 3000 miles from the companies technical base in Pittsburgh. PA.  Our recovery rate was about 30 percent (for every 100 pounds started only 30 pounds of good product)  Typical production recover is about 75 percent, the rest being recycled into new sheet ingot.  When your recovery is as low as 30 percent you stack scrap in the fields around the plant.  I was a young engineer with 12 years of experience, a good technical background, and able to work long hours solving problems.  We got the major problems solved and started to break even and I returned with my family to the states.  I got promoted to chief mechanical engineer at ALCOA's Davenport works.  We were in Swansea only 18 months but what a crash course in learning.  
The plant in Swansea closed about 2005 largely because it never was in balance.  It had more than twice the hot rolling capacity as cold rolling and finishing.  You can't do well when your biggest investment, hot rolling, only needs to run about 2.5 days per week.  ALCOA could never see it's way into investing more money in the plant with a second cold mill and more finishing capacity.  They had good people and made some money from 1981 to the end but never could remove the stain from the difficult years in the late 70's.
I learned a huge amount working there and went on to deal with rolling engineering worldwide from 1990 until I retired in 2000. 

Dave Smucker
Brasstown, NC

-----Original Message-----
From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer
Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2017 7:11 PM
To: theforge at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [TheForge] Re: Iron Bridge


Dave Smucker <davesmucker at hotmail.com> wrote:

> In 1980 when we were working and living in Wales you could still walk 
> among the stones at Stone Hedge but we never make it to Iron Bridge.

I was there for the 1980 Hereford blacksmithing conference.  Part of the deal was a day trip to Ironbridge/Coalbrookdale.

> I had little time off because the "plant" was losing $ 4.000.000 per 
> month and we were working close to 12 hours per day 7 days a week.

Now my curiosity is aroused.  What were you doing there, what was the "plant"?

After the conference, I had no specific plans except to spend a week in London so one of the local guys took me home to his rather isolated stone house in Wales for dinner and an overnight.  Tearing at speed up paved country lanes only a little wider than the car, overhung with foliage so every curve was a blind corner, on the wrong side of the road (to the extent that "side" meant anything on such a narrow lane) was um... exciting. :-)


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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