Catalogue description Records of James Bridge Copper Works Ltd, Walsall.

Records of James Bridge Copper Works Ltd, Walsall. Records include accounts, operational records, premises and property records, newspaper reports, photographs, records of IMI Refiners. ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY In 1920, the site and buildings of a former brickworks at James Bridge in Walsall were purchased by the James Brothers of The Wolverhampton Metal Company Ltd, Wednesfield, for use as a copper smelting works. The site continued to develop but by 1931, the works were ordered to close indefinitely due to complaints from Walsall Town Council about the nuisance caused by the smelting of sulphurous ores and matter that came from the 100ft chimney and affected the rest of the town. Some 150 manual workers - furnace men, engineers, electricians and labourers were affected. The factory re-opened in 1932 with taller chimneys but the smelting section faced closure once more at the start of World War Two due to blackout problems, but re-opened at the end of hostilities to deal with the recovery of copper from war surplus. In 1946 James Bridge Copper Works was floated as a public company. In 1953 James Bridge Copper Works Ltd, due to new smelting processes, became leaders in the reclamation of waste materials to form copper. A number of firms refined copper at this time but none were laid out to deal with such poor material. Mounds of ash and residues from other foundries, old motor-car parts, and similar scrap were all used and material from all over Great Britain came by road and rail to the stockyards of James Bridge. Before the larger pieces of scrap were smelted they were broken up and any steel was sold or put back into circulation immediately. Aluminium was sent to the parent company - The Wolverhampton Metal Company Ltd. The lowest grade material went into the blast furnace and the product from this was more than 80% copper. The end product was the raw material for other manufacturers which eased the national shortage and reduced dependency on foreign copper supplies. In 1967 The Wolverhampton Metal Company Ltd embarked on a £3m development of its Walsall works which aimed to increase production capacity to 50,000 tons of high-grade electrolytic copper a year. In the same year, and largely contributable to its ownership of James Bridge Copper Works Ltd, IMI Ltd purchased The Wolverhampton Metal Company Ltd. On October 1st 1971 The 'James Bridge Copper Works Ltd' became known as 'IMI Refiners Ltd'. IMI Refiners Ltd invested considerably into its refinery at James Bridge, and introduced a giant continuous copper anode casting line at the company, one of only three machines in the world. The project cost £3.4m and in 1984 was granted £400,000 under the Industrial Development Act. In its Support for Innovation scheme the government also provided a grant of £252,862 to IMI Refiners towards a three-year £758,586 project for the development of continuous casting of copper strip.