Haut-Fourneau 6 Seraing
THE ABANDONED BLAST FURNACE IN BELGIUM
This is ‘Haut-Fourneau 6’ or ‘HF6’, a blast-furnace in the Liege region of Belgium. It was built in 1958 by ‘SA Société Métallurgique d’Espérance-Longdoz’, an ancient Belgian coal mining and steelmaking company dating back to 1836.
The main steel production of the Métallurgique d’Espérance-Longdoz company were concentrated along the Meuse river: four blast furnaces, a steel plant, a coke plant and several rolling mills.
Initiated in 1959, HF6 was among the largest and most sophisticated blast furnaces in Europe. It boasted a daily capacity of 1800–2000 tons of pig iron. By 1970, ‘Espérance-Longdoz’ and its assets, HF6 included, were acquired by another steel company based in Liège, ‘Cockerill-Ougrée-Providence’. This merger positioned it as the fifth-largest steel producer within the European Economic Community.
Cockerill-Sambre
Eventually, the Cockerill group merged in 1981 with the Charleroi-based Hainaut-Sambre, giving birth to Cockerill-Sambre. In Liège, only blast furnaces HF6 and HFB were left in activity. During the ownership of Cockerill-Sambre, HF6 was largely renovated and refurbished. Further improvements occurred after the company’s transformation into Arcelor in 1999. Nevertheless, in the first 2000s, Arcelor announced its intention to progressively cease any steelmaking activity in the Liège area due to a persistent market crisis.
Stand-by
Due to the crisis, HF6 was shut down in 2005, yet it remained intact owing to significant social mobilization and union negotiations. The facility was preserved on stand-by for potential reactivation. Subsequently, in 2006, Arcelor and Mittal Steel merged, creating Arcelor-Mittal, the world’s largest steel producer. The new conglomerate reinitiated operations at HF6 in 2008, but the global economic downturn and declining steel prices led to a mere nine-month operational period before the furnaces were idled once more.
After the new closure, the dismantling and demolition process begun in 2016. I took the photos from ‘Haut-Fourneau 6’ in 2016. The site was demolished in 2017.
