New Zealand had limited deposits of iron ore, but the deposits of ironsand were massive. It had been used by some early settlers to manufacture steel and pig iron, but the material could not be smelted in common bloomeries or blast furnaces. A few smelting companies formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were unable to process the ore with any economic success due to the sandy nature and high titanium content, which tended to form hard, brittle carbides in the steel. In 1939, a commission was formed to study the properties of the ore and devise a way of smelting it on an industrial scale. The commission determined that, by sintering the sand into bigger chunks or pellets, the problems of smelting the sand in a blast furnace could be eliminated. However, at that time World War II began, and thus further development was suspended and did not resume until the late 1960s, producing the first output of steel in 1969.