Irwin & Sheehan has ceased to manufacture steel cans. This is the story.
The business has been making steel cans in Waterloo since the '30s. Much has changed in eighty years. Waterloo is now an inner urban suburb. And residents are much less forgiving about airborne pollution.
Irwin & Sheehan had partially upgraded its printing process from thermal to UV, but the printing room was still releasing solvents into the air, albeit below the legal threshold. Residents neighbouring the premises were complaining and the council was exerting pressure on the business because of that. So Irwin & Sheehan closed the printing room entirely.
This left it with the undesirable option of sourcing both its tin plate and printing overseas. Taking up this option would cause the business to lose the flexibility and serviceability on which it had built its name. It would also have to hold more stock, and this carried cost implications.
The original factory staff in 1934 at the rented factory space on Elizabeth Street, prior to construction of the I&S site in Waterloo.
The steel can market in Australia is shrinking too, and two large companies dominate. Irwin & Sheehan had never been in the market to service the big users that gravitate to "the big two" as irwin calls them, but the 2nd and 3rd tier companies on which its business relied were no longer sufficient support for a viable company.
With little opportunity to increase its market share in the steel can market, the Sheehan half of the partnership felt that the business was being squeezed too hard to continue.
Office staff and factory executives in the 60s. Seated in the middle are (from the left) John Sheehan , Jack Irwin (founder) and Keith Irwin (Son of Jack Irwin).
At the same time, the company was being wooed by developers to sell its premises. The company was given an offer it chose not to refuse, and sold the site.
So, John Irwin is in the process of purchaing the company outright. And he has had to make decisions for the future of his new business, Irwin Packaging, with its new premises in Moorebank. Irwin Packaging will not manufacture steel cans, but it will continue to distribute the stock it is holding. It will also distribute composite cans as it has always done, and the plastics division will continue to operate from its premises in China.
