William Sandford, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetWilliam Sandford
British businessman
Date of Birth: 26-Sep-1841
Place of Birth: Great Torrington, England, United Kingdom
Date of Death: 29-May-1932
Profession: metallurgist
Nationality: United Kingdom
Zodiac Sign: Libra 
About William Sandford
- William Sandford (26 September 1841 – 29 May 1932) was an English-Australian ironmaster. Sandford was born at Torrington in Devon and became an accountant, eventually becoming manager of Ashton Gate Iron Rolling Mills.
- In 1883 he moved to Sydney, employed to organise a wire-netting plant, at what was then part of Five Dock now Chiswick, NSW. He had left two children by a previous marriage in England, but he married Caroline Newey on 3 May 1884 at Goulburn.He left the wire netting plant, set up a company (the Fitzroy Iron Company), leased the Fitzroy Iron Works at Mittagong in March 1886—in order to re-roll rails—and commenced production there in August 1886.
- While there, he had made what was probably the first galvanised iron sheet manufactured using sheet iron rolled in Australia, around September 1886.
- The rolling mill at Mittagong proved unsuitable and he relocated his operations to the rolling mills of the Eskbank Ironworks at Lithgow, which he leased for the purpose from James Rutherford. In 1892, he purchased the Eskbank Ironworks at Lithgow, and was given a government contract in railway parts.
- While under his control, the works at Lithgow first produced steel in 1901, and its new blast furnace—the first truly modern one in Australia—entered service in May 1907.
- Although Sandford's Lithgow works was not the first to produce steel in Australia, it was the first to do so in large quanties by using the Siemens-Martin Open Hearth process.
- The Lithgow works was the first integrated iron and steel works in Australia. Around the time he purchased the Eskbank works, Sandford became a vigorous protectionist, leading the Lithgow National Protection Association and running unsuccessfully for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Hartley on a protectionist platform.A tariff on imported iron was applied by George Dibb's Protectionist government in New South Wales, between 1983 when it was abolished by the incoming Free Trade government of George Reid in 1895.
- Sandford began to face financial difficulties due to rising costs, uncertain markets and scarcity of material, and—in his own view—the absence of protection against import competition.
- He contested the first federal election as a Protectionist candidate for Parramatta, but was defeated by Joseph Cook. After trying unsuccessfully to sell his iron works, his formation of William Sandford Ltd did little to ease his fears of bankruptcy.
- In 1903 he again ran for the federal parliament, this time against Free Trader Sydney Smith in Macquarie, but he was again unsuccessful.
- Premier Joseph Carruthers persuaded him to agree to a contract supplying all of New South Wales's iron and steel, but again he encountered financial ruin.
- The Commercial Banking Co.
- of Sydney foreclosed on the works in October 1907. The Eskbank Ironworks and its near new blast furnace were taken over by the Hoskins Brothers (C & G Hoskins) in 1908, Under the complicated deal, the Hoskins took over Sandford's overdraft of £138,000, paid £14,000 to shareholders of William Sandford Ltd in the form of 4 per cent bonds, and paid £50,000 to Sandford himself - ensuring Sandford's future financial security. Sandford expressed frustration that he had been forced to set up an iron and steel industry "without duties or a bonus"—something he himself saw as an impossibility—and he believed himself to have failed.This explained much of the mental anguish that characterised his final years at Lithgow. Sandford is viewed, justifiably, as the father of the iron and steel industry in Australia.
- Between 1928 and 1931, the iron and steel making operations at Lithgow were relocated to Port Kembla, where steel is still made today. Exhausted by his repeated business failures, Sandford retired to Darling Point in 1908, later moving to an orchard in Castle Hill and then Eastwood.
- He died in 1932.
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