Cecil Hoskins
Sir Cecil Harold Hoskins was an Australian industrialist associated with the iron and steel industry. He is notable mainly for the establishment of the steel industry at Port Kembla, the company Australian Iron & Steel, and its subsequent merger with BHP in 1935. He was also on the board of the Australian Mutual Provident Society for many years and was its chairman from 1947 to 1962. He is less well known for his involvement in centre-right political organisations and the scouting movement, and his interest in landscape gardens.
Early life
Cecil Hoskins was the fourth-eldest child of Charles Hoskins and his wife Emily. He was born in Petersham, New South Wales, on 11 November 1889. He was one of their eight children who would survive their early childhood, and the second-eldest son.By the time of his birth, his father was on the verge of becoming a prosperous manufacturer, being a half owner, with his elder brother George, of the company G & C Hoskins. In only a few years, the company expanded rapidly as a manufacturer of cast iron and steel pipes. File:Holyrood 142.jpg|thumb|'Illyria', the Hoskins family home at Strathfield until 1908|left|213x213pxHoskins had a privileged upbringing, as the son of a wealthy industrialist. Sharing his father's enthusiasm for motor cars, in 1905, he was driving a 'Star' 7 h.p. car that he shared with his two brothers. He committed a traffic offence, in 1906, at a time when cars were a rarity on Sydney's roads. Cecil and his younger brother Sidney were driving well before drivers' licences were introduced in NSW, in 1910, something that may have influenced the government to set the minimum age for licensed drivers at 17 years old.
Hoskins attended Burwood Public School, Homebush Grammar School at Strathfield and boarded at King's College in Goulburn while his parents were in Perth, in relation to the Goldfields Pipeline. He finished his disjointed schooling, from 1903 until 1906, when he and his brothers were day students at Newington College. Hoskins left school after Form IV.
He subsequently worked at an ironmongers, Briscoe & Co., until the beginning of 1908, after which he was needed at Lithgow.
He never attained tertiary qualifications of any kind, something that, later in his life, would colour his own attitude to university-trained engineers, metallurgists, and other professionals, almost certainly to his own detriment.
Lithgow
Hoskins had not worked in the family company, until G & C Hoskins took over the operations of William Sandford Limited, at the Eskbank Ironworks, Lithgow. Charles Hoskins brought the family to Lithgow. Charles's elder brother George and his three sons managed the pipe manufacturing business, which was about to undergo a large expansion involving the opening of a new pipe plant at Rhodes in 1911.William Sandford and his sons had left the works, as the Hoskins took over Lithgow. Sandford's General Manager, William Thornley, left soon afterwards, and was gone by April 1908. Cecil and Guildford, though still very young men, needed to take on management roles. Their younger brother, Arthur Sidney, ended his schooling prematurely, after refusing to be left out of the family's challenge.
Prior to his arrival in Lithgow, Hoskins had never set foot in an iron and steel works; even his father had only visited the Lithgow works for the official opening of Sandford's blast furnace in May 1907. However, Hoskins' father was a tough businessman, who had plenty of experience in managing a heavy industrial business, and who would turn around the business by 1914, by modifications and additions to the plant.
By Hoskins own admission he worked initially more in the office and sales side of the Lithgow works. That is not to say that he did not play an important part in turning around the Lithgow works. Under William Sandford, the works had been run in an idiosyncratic manner, and the accounts, so far as they existed, were in a mess. It took a relatively short time for the new owners to understand that the works actually had been making a loss.
He was, however, in the thick of it, with his father and elder brother, when all three were under siege by rock-throwing rioters, during the protracted industrial dispute of 1911. In 1912, still in his early twenties, he became a director of G & C Hoskins.
He lost two of his sisters; Hilda, in a level-crossing accident in 1912, and Nellie to tuberculosis, in 1914. In 1916, his elder brother, Guildford, died after an accident at home.
The unexpected death of Guildford thrust Hoskins into the role of son and heir, even more so after George Hoskins retired. Charles bought out George's family's share of the business in 1919, renaming it Hoskins Iron & Steel in 1920. Hoskins was groomed as Charles Hoskins' main successor. In April 1921, he was to claim that he had spent at least six months in every department of the Lithgow works, and by that time had toured America to see modern plants and to learn, in preparation for the later plant at Port Kembla. In March 1921, Hoskins was the public spokesman of the company, under the tragic circumstances of the Cadia mine disaster.
When Charles Hoskins retired in 1924, Hoskins became chairman of Hoskins Iron and Steel. He and his brother Sid became co-managing directors of the company. As a result of his new role as chairman, Hoskins and his family left Lithgow for Sydney in November 1924.
Sydney
Although the name of Hoskins is commonly associated with Lithgow, the family business started in Sydney and many of Hoskins' family lived there. The original businesses of Hoskins Iron and Steel, the pipe manufacturing plants at Ultimo and Rhodes, were still operating there during the 1920s.With the move to Port Kembla being planned, the retirement of his father, the prospect of needing to raise additional capital, and the need to influence the Government of New South Wales, it made sense that Hoskins had a presence in Sydney. As chairman and co-managing director, he moved there at the end of 1924.
By late 1924, the Kembla Building, a modern office building of 12 storeys—designed by architect John Barr—was nearing completion, at 58-60 Margaret Street, Sydney. It was the new head office of Hoskins Iron and Steel. The building was owned by C. H. Hoskins Pty Ltd, the private company set up by Charles Hoskins to hold his family's business interests. It was soon a fashionable office address. Its occupants, as well as Hoskins' businesses, included foreign government representatives, architectural firms, and various other prominent firms.
In August 1927, Southern Portland Cement Limited was created to set up a cement works near Berrima. It was associated with Hoskins Iron and Steel, and Howard Smith Limited, an Australian company that would later back Hoskins' plans at Port Kembla. Hoskins and his brother Sid became directors of the new company, with its registered office being the Kembla Building.
In November 1927, Hoskins returned for a three-month business trip. As well as visiting foreign steel plants, it is likely that it was around this time he was meeting with the British companies that would later back the move to Port Kembla. When Australian Iron & Steel was founded in June 1928, its registered office was the Kembla Building.
Hoskins and his family lived in Sydney until around 1935. During that time, his wife Dorothy became socially prominent.
Relocating an industry
Hoskins' father Charles Hoskins had realised that Lithgow had inherent disadvantages as a site for a modern steelworks. From as early as 1911, he had been interested in building a plant at Port Kembla. In late 1920, the company acquired 380 acres of the Wentworth Estate, at Port Kembla, as the site for a steelworks. When Charles Hoskins retired in 1924, the plan for a new works at Port Kembla was in place, but there was some deliberate ambiguity about the future of the existing steelworks at Lithgow. Charles Hoskins died in 1926 and would not see his vision fulfilled.Hoskins had learnt what he knew of steel production from his time at the relatively antiquated Lithgow works and from trips that he made overseas to visit more modern plants. He correctly surmised that American and German steelmakers were more technologically advanced than the British practice which he associated with the old Lithgow technology. However, constrained by finances, compromises would need to be made.
The transfer of operations began in 1927 and took over four years to complete. Cecil Hoskins would be responsible for the construction and commissioning of the new plant at Port Kembla, while his brother Sid would run the operations at Lithgow, as these gradually wound down. The redundant parts of the Lithgow plant were to be demolished. Some of the Lithgow works reappeared at Port Kembla, but much of it would end up as scrap iron fed into the new blast furnace.
Blast furnace operations
Hoskins needed to raise funds to commence work at Port Kembla and in 1926, Hoskins Iron and Steel went to the market with 300,000 preference shares, of £1 paying 7.5%. Construction began on the site of the new blast furnace during May 1927. Capable of producing 6,000 tons of iron per week, it would easily exceed the combined output of the Lithgow blast furnaces.Castings for the new furnace were being made at the Lithgow works, in June 1928, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that the new furnace would replace the two at Lithgow, In August 1928—just twenty years after G & C Hoskins had taken over the troubled operations of William Sandford Limited at Lithgow—Hoskins' mother, Emily Hoskins, lit the new blast furnace.
No sooner than all seemed well with the furnace, in early September 1928, a tap hole blew out unleashing a flood of molten iron, which left injury and destruction in its path. This would be but one of the 'teething problems' the young plant would have in its early years.
The company had built a private wharf on the Outer Harbour, to land its iron ore. The first ore from South Australia arrived in July 1928, dooming the existing ore mine at Cadia and its branch railway. The company's other ore mine at Tallawang had already closed in February 1927. Hoskins had secured a mining lease on Cockatoo Island and its 30-million tons of iron ore, in 1927. However, Port Kembla would instead depend upon BHP to supply its South Australian ore, under a contract that would expire in 1938. The wharf would also later be used to unload imported equipment for the steel furnaces and rolling mills.
The railway line from Moss Vale to Unanderra opened in 1932 allowing limestone and dolomite for the blast furnace to be brought more easily from Marulan and Mount Fairy. The company was already making coke at Wongawilli, and had been railing coke to Lithgow since 1916; from 1928 it would go the shorter distance to Port Kembla. Dolomite was quarried at Mount Fairy, replacing the old Havilah deposit.
Gradually, the Lithgow iron-making plant was shut down as operations were transferred in stages to Port Kembla. The first part of Lithgow to close was the No.2 Blast Furnace in December 1927, ostensibly for repairs. The coke ovens were closed in February 1928. Falling demand was blamed for both of these closures. That was followed by the closure of the remaining blast furnace in November 1928. There was a degree of deception involved; Hoskins could not show his hand until the Port Kembla furnace had proven itself in production. The workers at Lithgow were given the impression that the closures may only be temporary, and that there were no firm plans to demolish the two furnaces. However, once the last blast furnace closed, demolition soon commenced. The iron ore quarry at Cadia had already closed, by early November 1928, as had the private Cadia mine railway.
Pig iron was then railed from Port Kembla to Lithgow to feed the open-hearth steelmaking furnaces there. In 1930, the Hoskins iron pipe operation, was relocated from Rhodes in Sydney to Port Kembla, where a new Lanvand spun pipe plant could access pig iron from the new blast furnace.