Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.
While you've a Lucifer to light your fag1,
Smile, boys that's the style ....

This song was a favourite of British soldiers marching to war in both World Wars and the Lucifer in question was a type of match. Around 500 billion matches are used every year although much demand has been eroded by single use lighters. If you have a single use cigarette lighter in your pocket or your handbag the chances are it comes from the Chinese industrial city of Wenzhou. There's also a fair chance it comes from entrepeneur Mr Feng's factory. He started his factory 15 years ago with a small loan and now produces 100m cigarette lighters a year. Mr Feng's formula for success is simple. Learn how to make something, then make it cheaper than anyone else.

There are many other entrepeneurs like Mr Feng in China and they nearly dealt the Turkish match sector a death blow. However in an exciting industry turnaround this year Swedishmatch, which was forced to close down a production facility in 2006, is  planning to get back into production. The Turkish match industry is recovering because Turkish match imports from China have been banned (because they do not come up to the standards demanded by EU harmonisation criteria). Chairman of the Malazlar Match company board Selahattin Demirçelik is delighted; ‘The criterion limits the use of heavy metals in matches. The matches from China, India, and Iran do no comply with this criterion. Therefore, these matches have not been able to enter Turkey for the past one year. As in the old days, we cannot meet the demand. We stand tall.’  

İn 2000 there were four Turkish match factories. However, the companies were pressured by Chinese matches and lighters, especially by single-use products. Fluctuation in currency exchange rates made the situation worse and soon after manufacturers started closing down facilities. Malazlar, a family-owned firm, is the only one who held out despite losing money for three consecutive years. Having invested in other fields the firm compensated its losses in match manufacturing with income from its other interests and concentrated on modernising their manufacturing techniques.

Demirçelik said; ‘We made sure the harmful chemicals in the matches, such as heavy metals, mercury, and arsenic are in accordance with the EU criteria’. The firm have also experienced an increase in the exportation demand as well; ‘We have been exporting nearly 30 percent of our production to England, France, Germany, Algeria, Egypt, Haiti, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Peru, and Israel. We manufactured 440 million boxes of matches in 2006. Of these, we exported 212 million boxes. This is a record. We are not worried as Chinese matches are not in accordance with the EU’.

 İnterestingly Malazlar's biggest export destination is England because he says ‘pipe smoking is very high’. Two percent of all men in England and Wales smoked a pipe in 2001 and the figure was highest for those over the age of 60, 4% of whom smoked a pipe. İt’s easy to see why match manufacturers love pipe smokers, Trevor Baylis OBE, Pipe Smoker of the Year  1999 and inventor of the clockwork radio, reckoned that he had used a box of Swan Vesta matches (average contents 85) each day for 49 years - a staggering 1,520,225 matches. With the determined efforts of men like Mr. Baylis and the currrent EU legislation there is the hope that the economic recovery of the Turkish match industry will not just be a flash in the pan.

Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl

It was night on New Year’s Eve, and a poor, little match girl was out on the streets selling matches. In a nook between two buildings, she wanted to warm herself by lighting matches. In the light of the first match she saw a hot iron stove, but the fire was soon blown out by the howling wind. She lit a second match and saw a fully laden dinner table with delicious foods and a roasted goose that came slowly toward her. By the light of the third match she saw a beautiful Christmas tree lit with a million candles. Upon lighting the fourth match she saw her smiling grandmother, the only person who ever loved her. This filled her with so much joy she quickly lit the next match and the next so that her grandmother never fades. Finally, the grandmother took the happy girl in her arms and they flew higher and higher to a place where there's no cold, no hunger, no fear.

The next morning, the little girl was found dead in the snow with a smile upon her lips. “She wanted to warm herself!” people exclaimed as they noticed the burned out matches littered around her body. However, no one knew what beauty she had seen or with what glory she had gone with her grandmother into a joyous new year.

The real match girls

Factory workers producing matches in the 19th century suffered terrible health hazards. Workers (mostly women) suffered ‘phossy jaw’, a type of bone cancer, caused by the phosphorus they worked with. The sides of their faces turned green and then black and discharged a foul-smelling pus, before they died. Young girls carrying boxes of matches on their heads were bald by age 15.

In England, 1400 match-girls working for the firm Bryant & May went on strike about pay and health conditions in 1888. The British Government had refused to legislate against the use of yellow phosphorus as it would be 'in restraint of trade', despite it being banned in Sweden and the USA.

The publicity that ensued caused a furore and influential people including Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army and George Bernard Shaw lent their support. The match-girls formed a Union, the company agreed to improve conditions and to do away with a punitive fine system. Workers were fined for such things as talking, going to the lavatory without permission and coming in late.

The Salvation Army opened its own match factory in 1891 using red phosphorus and paying better wages. Bryant & May phased out the use of yellow phosphorus by 1901.

The Chinese Match girls

China today is like 18th century Manchester, only much, much bigger. Mr Feng's secret is his work force. In a large hanger I found 600 of them sitting behind rows of desks assembling lighters. Most were young women all working for virtually nothing. Mr Feng pays his workers about $90 a month.

Did you know?

Matches are a Chinese invention. Thought to have been invented in the year 577 AD by impoverished court ladies during a military siege. There is no evidence of matches in Europe before 1530. Therefore, the Chinese were using them for just short of a thousand years before they arrived in Europe.

Useful Tip

 Croydon Caving Club state that matches can be effectively waterproofed by dipping the tips in molten wax and then shaking off the excess and using an emery board as a striker.