The Case of Fiberite
Packaging Before Plastic
Waste paper arriving at the Purfleet wharf, 1960s
In the mid-1950s, Thames Board Mills could have been excused for thinking they had cornered the ‘cardboard’ market. Grown from humble origins in a small paper mill (then named the Thames Paper Company) in Purfleet in Essex in 1902, by 1937 the company had expanded to an extra base in Warrington, in Cheshire. That plant was massively expanded in the 1950s. An advert that ran in the Yorkshire Post & Leeds Intelligencer in 1955 boasted of the £9 million extension, which had been illustrated in the same paper the year before (Yorkshire Post & Leeds Intelligencer, 22 October 1954; 14 January 1955). Clearly Thames Board Mills saw Yorkshire manufacturers as important potential clients. The market for sanitary and secure packaging was expanding; the company stated that manufacture of board had ‘multiplied fifty times in fifty years’ by 1954. The company interpreted an increase in demand for Fiberite and also for Thames Board as a result of ‘rising standards of living, and the constant marketing of new products’ (‘An eye for protection’, advert, Birmingham Daily Post, 24 October 1955).
Thames Board Mills advert from Yorkshire Post & Leeds Intelligencer, 22 October 1954. It also ran in the Birmingham Daily Post.
In another advert from the same year, the company compared the squalor of ‘days gone by’, when ‘foodstuffs were passed from hand to hand, exposed both to the elements and to passing dogs and flies’. It welcomed the departure of those ‘good old days’, and the new protection of food by ‘modern packaging and the use of brand names’ (Advert, Yorkshire Post & Leeds Intelligencer, 14 January 1955).
The following decade saw further expansion, with factories in Thurrock and Cumbernauld. In 1964 the first overseas factory was established in Nigeria. That same year the company was absorbed into Unilever Limited, and work began on a new mill in Workington. The mills made ‘Thames Board’ (thin cardboard used for cartons — individual packaging) and Fiberite (thicker, heavier duty card used to make cases containing multiple items). Here the process of making the board is illustrated for a company brochure from 1964:
(1-2) Waste paper was pulped and ‘contraries’ such as cans, strings and rope were removed; (3) Dirt was removed by centrifugal force; (4) fibres were steam-heated and any pitch and wax in the mix was dispersed; (5) fibres were refined, and chemicals added; (6) pulped fibres flowed into the vats and a ‘fibrous mat is formed on the surface of a cylinder mould rotating in each vat’. Layers were built up; (7) the ‘web of board’ was rolled to removed water and consolidate the sheets; (8) the board was dried; (9) the board was finished (‘calendered’); (10) in case-making factories, the board was cut to size (some boards were corrugated); (11) cases were creased and cut in machines; (12) cases were finished, mostly by stitching (a minority were glued or taped).
Stitching the cases, 1960s
By 1916 some boards manufactured at Thames Mills Board were known as Fiberite: that year ‘good second-hand Fiberite cartons’ were for sale in the classifieds section of the Lincolnshire Echo (8 November 1916), described as ‘lighter than packing cases: take up less storage space’. An advertising campaign of the mid-1920s featured ‘The Fiberite Girl’ (sporting a checked protective cap to match her uniform) and drew attention to a ‘Revolution in Packing’. The packages were marketed as ‘lighter … cleaner, more hygienic, more attractive, a package that is an advertisement withal. It means lower freight costs, less pilferage, less labour, less warehouse space, more dispatch.’
Advert from The Times, 5 January 1926
An advert in the same newspaper two months later featured a reused Fiberite case which had traveled to Australia and back (returning with 45lbs of dried milk), to be reused again in the sending of a half-hundredweight of stationery supplies to Thames Board Mills, ‘by a curious coincidence’ (left, The Times, 5 March 1926). A photograph was included to prove the sound condition of this case, which itself weighed only 4lb. Endorsements from Leyland Rubber and Scott’s Porage Oats (and others) were added for good measure. Interested parties were invited to write to ‘Department T’ and request a copy of the brochure ‘A Good Case’.
Manufacturers of all stripes certainly thought this packaging a marketable bonus: an ACME wringer, for sale in 1925, was adverted as arriving ‘in a nice fiberite box’ (Lancashire Evening Post, 1925). In the 1930s the Newark Egg Packers used a mix of returnable 30 dozen wooden cases, plus non-returnable 15 dozen Fiberite cases (Letter, Lincolnshire Standard & Boston Guardian, 4 June 1932). Lever Brothers were another client of Thames Board Mills, packaging soap and other products in Fiberite packaging. During World War II some delivery drivers were rewarded with prizes for bringing back quantities of Lever Bros ‘empties’ in good condition, for reuse before eventual repulping. (Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate Cheriton Herald, 8 August 1931; Yorkshire Post & Leeds Intelligencer, 18 October 1941).
This little matchbook (right, or on mobile, below) was made in the company’s halcyon days. At the same time, adverts in local and national newspapers included eye-catching, specially commissioned engravings. Some were designed by John Farleigh. Many were accompanied by myths and tales of yore relating to durable protection from the wear and tear of hard travel.
The advert below drew attention to the variety of products being packaged in Thames Board or Fiberite: ‘frozen foods, fertilisers, radio sets, pottery, soap powders, refrigerators, toothpaste and washing machines’. It ends with a grand claim, that such boxes helped ‘our expanding industries’ and in doing so provided a service to the ‘nation as a whole’.
Advert from Punch, 23 April 1956
By the late-1950s, the style of the accompanying images had changed. Now there were chirpy adverts featuring precious cargo such as a seal, an octopus, and this sleepy giraffe (below). It was alleged that all would ‘arrive all right in a Fiberite’.
Illustrated London News, 3 May 1958
But Thames Board Mills and Fiberite did not thrive under Unilever’s wing. Adverts tailed off in the mid-1960s, and the South Mill at Purfleet closed in the 1970s. Further decline followed. It is possible that the company was disadvantaged by their client-companies setting up in-house packaging plants, or turning instead to plastic packaging. A similar fate had befallen ‘fancy box makers’ in the late-Victorian period, as featured in my forthcoming book, Rummage. Those packaging makers used strawboard, pasteboards and millboards, earlier versions of cardboard, also made from pulped materials.