Laminoirs et Usines du Ruau
THE ABANDONED FACTORY IN BELGIUM
‘Laminoirs et Usines du Ruau’ is an abandoned rolling mill in Charleroi. The mill manufactured metal joints for building constructions. Eventually, the site was abandoned in 2012.
Industrialist Émile Constant-Bonehill founded the factory in 1863. In 1879, the ‘Laminoirs du Ruau’ took over the Constant-Bonehill company. After a reorganization in 1905, the factory became ‘Laminoirs et Boulonnerie du Ruau’. At that time, the rolling mill also made bolts for industrial use.
The factory was dismantled during the First World War and bombed in 1944. It was rebuilt after the Second world War and enlarged in 1949. In 1958, the factory stopped producing bolts and was renamed ‘Laminoirs et Usines du Ruau’.
Crisis
Since 2008, the plant was producing at half power. In 2011, only a quarter of the old volumes came out of the workshops. The factory closed its doors in 2012 when the factory still employed 110 people. During its thirty years, the number of factory workers has been divided by three. The economic uncertainties were to blame for the closure of the plant.
The old factory is mostly empty now, but an old locomotive still sits in the factory halls. The dressing room and the break room, where workers ate lunch, still have furniture. Posters for the workers’ union voting are still on the walls. I visited the abandoned buildings in 2015 and 2016.
