The mature tinplate industry provides many opportunities for examination by research minded economists to examine how it has changed so much, in the last 70 years, from being predominantly a South Wales speciality to one of the more basic products for developing countries. As the predominant user of tin, it is fortunate to be one of the principal beneficiaries of the most successful commodity management scheme, and the International Tin Research Institute plays a valuable part in organising meetings concerned with the tinplate industry as a whole, of which the International Tinplate Conference is the most striking example, finding itself overwhelmed by the number of would be contributors of specialised knowledge.Other bodies provide other meeting points for actual groups - national bodies, specialist bodies for particular user industries and an increasing number of multi-national families. They have grown up piecemeal, and so are very unlikely to lead to the optimising of the potential of tinplate as a material of enormous significance to a modern world of finite resources and infinite needs, which will become increasingly concerned about industry effectiveness. The size and maturity of the tinplate industry, its giant steel suppliers, and the multitude of customers, make it vulnerable to competition from newer materials like plastics, and more highly integrated competitors, such as glass, aluminium and board.
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