Seraing together with other towns lying along the river Meuse is considered as one of the cradles of European industrial revolution. The rise of heavy industry was initiated by British entrepreneur John Cockerill, who built the first iron ore smelter in 1817 already. After his death in 1840 the plant was nationalized and continued to grow under the name "Société anonyme John Cockerill".
In 1955 the works were merged with neighbouring plant in Ougrée and soon an integrated plant "Cockerill-Ougrée" with more than 45.000 workers was formed.
By the 90´s the owners of the plant were changing rapidly. First new company "Cockerill-Ougrée-Providence et Espérance Longdoz" was established, later overtaken by Arbed and Usinor and finally merged with Arcelor Mittal in 2010.
The mill was not doing well though. Several restarts and mothballing lead into definite shutdown in 2009.
Demolition of blast furnace no.6 started in January 2016 and will take three years.
Keywords: cockerill sambre, seraing, haut fourneau 6, HF6, urban exploration, urbex, belgium, acierie, steelworks, ironworks, blast furnace, hochofen, stahlwerk, hochofenwerk, hochofenanlage, hüttenwerk, vysoká pec, opuštěná železárna, industriální fotografie, industrial photography, demolished
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