THEY came off an endless conveyor belt at the rate of 400 an hour, like new loaves from a giant oven.

But these 'loaves' were heavier - and hotter. They weighed about 40lb each and were molten metal.

Still in their tins, they passed under water coolers, but still glowed brightly as they were carried off on steel protected lorries to be stacked.

Each loaf - or ingot to give it its proper name - was engraved DARWEN and could go to one of a hundred destinations including Belgium, Peru, India, Hong Kong or Nigeria.

In 1957 it was the latest addition to the long list of products carrying Darwen's name all over the globe.

The Refined Iron Co had come into existence in a small works at Lodge Bank in 1952 and three years later it opened the most modern plant in the country, on a site near the railway goods yard at Spring Vale.

At night, the flames from its towering furnace lit up the night sky at the south end of town.

The business had also just acquired nearly four acres of land on the old corporation tip in nearby Sough Road, for further expansion.

It was the only business in the north west manufacturing refined pig iron ingots to customer specifications.

During the process, the ingredients - scrap iron, steel, ferros alloys, pig iron, limestone and coke - were analysed and weighed as carefully as any baking mix.

The furnace cooked it at the rate of seven tons an hour before soda ash was added to eliminate sulphur and then it was poured into the 'loaf tins'.

Managing director, David Rollinson, a major commanding 'B' squadron, Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry, said its laboratories we able to meet customer requirements of pig iron within very fine limits, which meant it could 'tailor make' each ingot.

He also praised the quality of the labour force they had recruited in Darwen - they were the reason the firm had been established in the town.

"It is appropriate, too, that Darwen, a centre of the declining cotton industry, should be the home of a process which is helping to convert old machinery, much of of scrapped textile looms, into new."