This 1963 steel rolling mill in Chertal is part of the success story of the Liège steel industry. In this steel factory, the molten pig iron, transported by torpedo wagons from the blast furnaces of Seraing and Ougrée, was converted into more than 3.5 milion tons of steel per year.
The Liège steel industry is older than Belgium itself. Its history dates back to 1817 when Englishman John Cockerill set up his first steel mill in Seraing. In the following years, the steel industry expanded and was growing continuously.
However, the crisis in the early 1980s hit them hard. Mergers and capital injections cannot prevent the two blast furnaces from being shut down in 2005. In 2006, an Indian steel giant takes them over, creating ArcelorMittal. The blast furnaces are put into operation again, only to close again barely two years later due to the low demand for steel.
A little later, the Heavy Metal rolling mill was reopened, but due to ongoing social conflicts, the activities were definitively shut down in 2011. Negotiations on a social plan continued for a while, but activities never resumed.
It didn't take long before copper thieves found their way to this site and looted all the copper, as they did before in the two blast furnaces…
Linz-Donawitz Process
Basic Oxygen Furnace is one of the most popular Steel Making process. Basic oxygen steelmaking, also known as LD (Linz-Donawitz) steelmaking is a method of primary steelmaking in which carbon-rich molten iron is made into steel. Blowing oxygen through molten pig iron lowers the carbon content of the alloy and changes it into low-carbon steel.
The size of this place is unimaginable. Barrels of 5 meters high where once there was molten metal, machines everywhere, unimaginably high factory halls and rolling bridges ... a great urbex location!
