Vivian & Sons facts for kids

Vivian & Sons was a big company in Wales, United Kingdom. It made metals and chemicals. The company started in 1810 in a place called Hafod, near Swansea. They mainly made copper, which is a reddish-brown metal. They also produced things like sulphuric acid and fertilizers as side products. The company stopped being a separate business in 1924.

John Vivian, who came from Cornwall, helped start the company. Around 1800, he became a manager at other copper factories in Penclawdd and Loughor. His son, John Henry Vivian, later became a manager too.

In 1808, John Vivian and his two older sons, John Henry and Richard Hussey Vivian, leased land at Hafod. They formed the new company, Vivian & Sons. Even though Richard was older, John Henry became the main manager because Richard was busy with his military career.

Building the Hafod Works

The company built the Hafod Smelting Works and Mills on the land they leased. Smelting is a process where metal is taken out of rock using heat. A writer named Wood mentioned in 1813 that Vivian & Co. had built new works. He said they paid attention to making the workers comfortable by arranging the furnaces differently.

By the 1840s, the Hafod Works became the biggest of its kind in the world! They produced a quarter (one-fourth) of all the copper made in the United Kingdom.

New Leaders and Growth

From 1845 to 1855, Henry Hussey Vivian, John Henry's oldest son, managed the works. He took full control when his father passed away. In 1853, Vivian & Sons bought the White Rock Copper Works with another company.

Henry Hussey Vivian was always looking for new ways to do things. In 1864, he started making sulphuric acid from the smoke that came out of the copper factories. This was a smart way to use waste. Then, in 1870-71, he changed part of the White Rock works to process different kinds of metal ores, like silver-lead. The White Rock works closed down in 1928.

What Vivian & Sons Owned

By the mid-1870s, Vivian & Sons had many different parts at Hafod. These included:

• Hafod Alkali Works (made chemicals)
• Hafod Copper Mills (shaped copper)
• Hafod Copper Works (made copper)
• Hafod Iron Foundry (worked with iron)
• Hafod Phosphate Works (made fertilizers)
• Hafod Silver Works (worked with silver)

The company also owned brick factories and other metal works. They even owned coal mines and had their own shipping offices in Swansea.

Henry Hussey Vivian also personally owned the Hafod Isha Nickel and Cobalt Works. Nickel and cobalt are other types of metals. In 1883, he created a new company, H.H. Vivian & Co. Ltd., to take over these works. This new company also had factories in Birmingham, England, and a nickel mine in Norway. For a few years, they even owned a mine in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, because Canadian nickel was becoming more popular than Norwegian nickel.

Changes in the Copper Business

By the mid-1880s, the quality of copper ore from Cornwall in England was not as good. It became cheaper to smelt copper ores closer to the mines in places like Chile. This meant that copper smelting slowly stopped in the Swansea area.

Other metal industries and engineering companies took the place of copper smelting. During World War I, Vivian & Sons helped the British Admiralty (the navy) by making brass tubes and other parts for ships. They more than doubled their production during this time. They also made parts for artillery shells.

The End of Vivian & Sons

Vivian & Sons operated from 1810 until 1924. In 1916, it became a limited company. Then, in 1924–25, Vivian & Sons joined with two other companies from Swansea. These companies were Williams, Foster and Company, and Pascoe Grenfell and Sons. Together, they formed a new company called British Copper Manufacturers Ltd.

Just a few years later, in 1928, this new company was bought by a very large chemical company called Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Later, in 1957, the metal parts of ICI in the Swansea Valley became part of another company called Yorkshire Imperial Metals. The old Hafod and Morfa Works continued to roll copper until they finally closed down in 1980.

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