Haut Fourneau B
Liege, Belgium
The Cockerill-Sambre Steelworks, popularly known as Haut Fourneau B (HFB) are a huge, stunning and very photogenic industrial wasteland in Ougrée, near Liege. By now I have spend 5 days photographing this site and I have still not managed to explore the whole site. I keep discovering new rooms, new vantage points, new halls, new machinery – alas, I have given up hope to see all of it, as this important piece of our industrial heritage is vanishing in front of our eyes at a breakneck speed. Demolition started pretty recently but, from recent photos, that I have seen, it is progressing very rapidly.
The Blast Furnace
The Blast furnace B at Ougrée, was the the last one to be erected in the province of Liège and started production in 1962. With a height of 81 meters, it was considered at the time to be the largest blast furnace in continental Europe and was producing almost 2000 tonnes of cast iron a day. It was built by the Luxembourgish engineering company Paul Wurth as part of an expansion and investment plan of the “Societe Cockerill-Ougree”. It was upgraded in 1967 and shut down for godd in 2011.
The Power Station
The Sinter Plant
The sinter plant started operating in 1979, about 17 years after the construction of the blast furnace, and was based on a design invented by Dwight & Lloyd in 1907, in which the feed moves continuously on articulated grates pulled along by chains. This was the 5th plant of this type built by John Cockerill and was commonly referred to as DL5. The Dwight & Lloyd sintering process is described in more detail in the “Sinter Plant” blog.
The Pumping Station
Other Pictures
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