IndustryEast India Company rule
Porto Novo iron works established
With a loan from the government, Josiah Marshall Heath set up iron and steel works at Porto Novo (Parangipettai) in South Arcot.
Around 1825 Josiah Marshall Heath, who had been a civil servant of the Company, secured a monopoly on making iron across a wide area around Madras. He went to England to learn iron and steel manufacture, came back in 1830 and, helped by a government loan, put up a factory at Porto Novo in southern Arcot district. The concern was reorganised in 1833 as the Porto Novo Steel and Iron Company. Its steel was shipped to Britain, where it went into bridges over the Menai Straits. In 1853 the East India Company assumed control of the works, operating them until 1874.
