The
strip mill was a major innovation, with the first being erected at
Ashland, Kentucky in 1923. This provided a continuous process, cutting out the need to pass the plates over the rolls and to double them, as in a pack mill. At the end the strip was cut with a
guillotine shear or rolled into a coil. Early (
hot rolling) strip mills did not produce strip suitable for tinplate, but in 1929
cold rolling began to be used to reduce the gauge further. The first strip mill in the
United Kingdom was opened at
Ebbw Vale in 1938 with an annual output of 200,000 tons.