Report - CSGD - Belgium, March 2013

Ric · Mar 25, 2013

CSGD - Belgium, March 2013

Visited with CmdrCord + j0nas (none member)

It's nice to see something new* I struggled to find any pictures or other reports from here regarding the newer part of the 3 plants on the site (the euro boys have probably been on it for months.. probably...)

The place is huge, I thought Heavy Metal was big, this is something else. the amount of equipment still in location is mind-blowing, nearly every piece of electrical equipment still had power, the buzz of high voltage lines, the amount of smelting pots allover the place.. I Loved it, you could really tell this was a mothballed plant up-to 3 months ago.

*apologies if you've seen this beforeâ€¦

We failed to see the Blast furnace this time round, seccas are on their toes it would appear and armed with furry razor blades.. I didn't fancy running around in the snow/ice to only face plant in front of a German Shepherd.

The furnace has been pictured a few times and named as HF4 but we concentrated on the steel workings which seem mostly un-reported that i can find*

Some History for you:

In some form or another there has been steel production at the CSGD site since 1836. The company was independent until 1966 where it joined with one of the Cockerilll companies which has many sites throughout Belgium and France and another well known Derp site nearby.

In the 1980's the French plants closed leaving the Belgium plant to function alone up until the early 2000's which saw the plant which hands again. It managed to run until late 2008 when the global downturn meant that the plant could no longer function as anticipated.

The plant was mothballed in 2008 with plans to restart 3 years later, this never happened due to a partnership with another company which failed in 2011, The plant closed fully in late 2012 with the loss of over 1000 jobs.

The site is mostly liquid steel production with the help of an onsite blast furnace which is linked via a very large pipe to a nearby well known Derp power station (Random but true.)

There are a few pictures of the blast furnace flying around from 2012 and labeled as HF4. I've not seen many pics of the steel production side other than the main hall, so i'd like to call this CSGD (why not)