Biscuit tins are steel tins with tin plate. This consists of steel sheets thinly coated with tin. The sheets are then bent to shape. By about 1850, Great Britain had become the dominant world supplier of tin plate, through a combination of technical innovation and political control over most of the suppliers of tin ore. Biscuit tin manufacture was a small but prestigious part of the vast industry of tin plate production, which saw a huge increase in demand in the 19th century was directly related to the growing industrialisation of food production, by increasingly sophisticated methods of preservation and the requirements made by changing methods of distribution.