Scottish Aluminium is a new display in Kelvin Hall that explores the story of the British Aluminium Company, its deep roots in Scotland and historical links to the British Empire.
Here, Jesper Ericsson, Curator of Numismatics at The Hunterian, talks us through the new display and the regions most heavily involved in Scotland’s aluminium production .
Aluminium transformed the world.
It’s a light, strong, versatile, easily recyclable metal and a good conductor of heat and electricity. Aluminium is therefore useful for making a huge variety of products, from drinks cans to saucepans and trains to aeroplanes.
The British Aluminium Company, known as British Aluminium (or BA), was registered on 5 May 1894. Over the following decades, BA developed sites across the UK and abroad.
In Scotland, these included Greenock, Falkirk, Burntisland, Foyers, Kinlochleven and Lochaber. There was also a short-lived plant at Invergordon (1971–81).
From the start, there were University of Glasgow connections to BA. Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) was one of the leading scientists of his day and Professor of Natural Philosophy for over 50 years.
He was an enthusiastic supporter of the aluminium industry and its potential, in his view, to regenerate the Highlands and the communities that lived there.
Making Aluminium: Bauxite
Aluminium is the most abundant metal on earth, but to be useful to us needs to be extracted and refined. Bauxite contains alumina (aluminium oxide). It takes four tons of bauxite to produce two tons of alumina powder.
Two tons of alumina powder makes one ton of aluminium. Because of the very large quantities required to produce aluminium, bauxite mining is damaging to the environment. Deforestation and pollution are just two of the harmful consequences.
To begin with, BA sourced bauxite from Northern Ireland. However, before long mines in the south of France became BA’s main suppliers until the Second World War (1939–45). BA also looked further afield for bauxite, to countries that were part of the British Empire. This will be the subject of a future blog post.
The conversion of alumina powder into ingots of aluminium takes place at a smelter. The most successful conversion process was invented independently by two chemists at the same time in 1886 – Charles Martin Hall in the USA and Paul Louis Héroult in France. The Hall-Héroult method is still in use today. In a strange quirk of fate, both men were born and died in the same years – 1863 and 1914.
Producing aluminium requires enormous amounts of energy. BA built smelters in the Scottish Highlands because plentiful water supplies allowed the company to access cheap hydro-electric power.
Foyers
Aluminium production began at Foyers on the banks of Loch Ness in 1896. The nearby Falls of Foyers provided the necessary hydro-electric power. Protestors condemned the building of a new village and smelter in an area of natural beauty.
Those in favour argued that BA provided much-needed support to an impoverished, rural part of the country. Although Foyers was the first BA smelter to open, it was also the first to shut. After 70 years of production, the site closed in 1967.
Facing stiff competition, it had become unprofitable and unable to compete with other aluminium producers in the UK and overseas.
Kinlochleven
Construction of the British Aluminium plant and town at Kinlochleven was a far greater undertaking than at Foyers. Work started in 1904 and before long, the once quiet and remote head of Loch Leven became a hive of industry.
Built from the ground up, Kinlochleven was designed as a model community by BA, where everyday life and the company were completely integrated.
The image below shows workers in the Furnace Room (where aluminium is produced) doing a job known as ‘breaking the crust’. This was to release gases. Furnace Rooms were hazardous places to work. Ventilation and extraction were often poor.
Not only were alumina and cryolite fumes in the atmosphere, but also carbon dust, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and flourides, which cause bone deformities in people and animals. Lung, skin and bladder cancers were common amongst Furnace Room workers.
Although British Aluminium provided employee benefits such as housing and leisure facilities, for many decades it failed to address dangerous working conditions and toxic emissions that affected people, wildlife and the landscape.
Kinlochleven was particularly vulnerable as it was in a valley, which trapped pollution between the mountains. These health and environmental issues only seriously improved in the 1980s after a series of reforms.
Kinlochleven experienced a similar downfall to Foyers and finally shut in 2000, a devastating blow for a town originally built for one industrial purpose. Since then, Kinlochleven’s focus has shifted to tourism, especially as it is part of the popular West Highland Way walking route.
Lochaber
By the outbreak of the First World War (1914-18), 90% of British aluminium was being produced by the smelters at Foyers and Kinlochleven. Demand soared due to military uses for the metal.
BA had ambitious expansion plans and in 1921, the company was granted permission to build a smelter at Lochaber, north-east of Fort William. Staff were housed in a new village, Inverlochy. Production of aluminium began in 1929.
Lochaber expanded over the years until in 1958, British Aluminium was taken over by an American company, Reynolds Metals, which retained the BA name.
However, in 1982, British Aluminium was acquired by a much larger and wealthier Canadian competitor, Alcan, becoming British Alcan Ltd. British Alcan Limited was in turn sold to investors in 1996.
Lochaber has so far managed to avoid the fate of Foyers and Kinlochleven. It is the last surviving aluminium smelter in the UK and the last remnant of what was once an important part of Scotland’s industrial history.
Find out more
Scottish Aluminium runs until 26 August and can be viewed whenever Kelvin Hall is open.
26 June 2024 is the 200th anniversary of Lord Kelvin’s birth. You can find out more about Kelvin’s legacy at the Hunterian Museum and on the University of Glasgow’s Lord Kelvin 200 webpage.
Search for items held by The Hunterian and Archives & Special Collections relating to aluminium and the British Aluminium Company/British Alcan Ltd here.
The National Library of Scotland holds digital material relating to aluminium such as Metal in Harmony, a BA film made in 1962 which you can view online or at NLS in Kelvin Hall.
The best book on Scotland and aluminium is Aluminiumville: Government, Global Business and the Scottish Highlands by Andrew Perchard, available through your local library or online.
Special thanks to colleagues at The Hunterian, Archives & Special Collections, Photographic Unit, National Library of Scotland and Glasgow Life for their help with the display.
There are more brilliant blogs by Jesper and others stretching right across our collection for you to explore – covering coins, medals and much more!
