Mike Pryce looks back at history of Worcester firm Metal Box

Under the heading “They Do Wonders With Cans”, the chap, whom I’d better not name, wrote: “Worcester’s giant Metal Box company can do amazing things with cans.

"Like making 600 in the time it takes to start your car. And what’s more they can tell a phone inquirer ‘You can have 50,000 cans of any size later today’. That’s the kind of response you  get from the firm’s can making factory at Perry Wood.”

In 1975 production of Metal Box’s  MetaMatic package handling system moved to part of the old Archdales factory in Bilford Road

Correct, or maybe slightly ambitious at 600 cans every second or so, it nevertheless gave a good indication of the Metal Box Worcester operation in its heyday.

The report went on: “Here about 900 Worcestershire people work in a maze of machines and pipes , night and day to produce something like 600 million cans a year for Britain’s food manufacturers.

Read more: Long-forgotten plan for rooftop car park on Worcester Co-Op

“Worcester is also the hub for the firm’s computer and machine services department, machinery building group and sales office, which together employ a further 900 Worcester people.”

Add to that a thriving sports and social club with an excellent sports ground at Battenhall and sales staff working from the Regency elegance of Heron Lodge in London Road and you can see why for many years Metal Box was a jewel in Worcester’s industrial crown.

In 1973, MetalBox developed the “Pulvermatic” shredder to dispose of metal, glass, plastic and cardboard items. The pile of bits on the floor is all that’s left of a five gallon metal can

It all dated back to Victorian industrialist William Blizzard Williamson, who set up a sheet metal business in Providence Street in 1858. Williamsons became part of the Metal Box Group in 1930 and that grew to be the third largest packing group in the world with 41 factories across the UK.

The main Worcester manufacturing plant was a 25-acre site at Perry Wood, alongside the rail line to London, although other sections were spread out across the city.

However in 1988 a report to company bosses warned it was under “determined and effective assault by competition whose costs are lower than ours”. As a result of which “large quantities of business have been lost, in spite of efforts to match the prices offered”.

The following year Common Market Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan gave the go-ahead for the merger of Metal Box’s British packaging factories with French group Carnaud and for a while things looked up.

One dozen cans of ginger beer enter the wrapping and sealing unit in 1966. Next, the heat-shrinking process

But it wasn’t to last. In April, 2013 a statement from owners Crown Cork & Seal said the Carnaud Metalbox site in Perrywood Walk would be wound down as it was not “economically possible” to keep the factory open because of “a consistent decline in sales”.

It confirmed that staff had been served with redundancy notices and the factory would close on July 7 with the loss of 118 jobs.

Another page turned in the changing face of Worcester and another city legend consigned to  history.