Dragon UrbEx

Florange Continuous Casting Plant

Visited April 2024 | France | Demolition Ongoing

One of my bucket list sites to explore! I have visited this place twice, first time in October 2023 when I explored the Steelworks and Blast Furnaces of the site. However, I missed the continuous casting plant and I’m glad to say that in my second explore in April of 2024 with Diverse-Photography-Urbex, I saw it. And my oh my was I not disappointed.

History:

Florange is a French commune, situated a few miles west of the large town of Thionville in the Moselle department of the Grand-Est region of France. It is home to an industrial behemoth that now sits silent and slowly rusting. That behemoth consists of many things: blast furnaces, steelworks, steel mills,a coke works etc. You get the picture: it’s enormous!

The late 19th century brought about massive demand for the production of iron and steel. Places rich in iron ore were in abundance in the Grand-Est region, and steel and iron smelting plants were being built everywhere. The site at Florange is an example of that. The first blast furnaces were built in 1906 next to the Chateau de Wendel (the house of the owners) and the Bureau Centrale – the central office buildings for the De Wendel steel business, which are themselves abandoned today. Later in the 20th century, the enormous continuous casting plant and steel works was built on a site adjacent to the blast furnaces.

Over the span of the site’s operation, six blast furnaces were built. Three were modernised and had their smelting capacities increased, whereas the other three were decommissioned and demolished. The enormous structures we see today are P3, P4 and P6 blast furnaces. P4 is in an advanced state of decay, having been mothballed in the 1990s from what I can ascertain. Not many of the original 1900s buildings remain, but the largest one to have survived is the 1,000ft long brick and iron hall to the south of the blast furnaces. This is the blower house and former power station and still has three Sulzer turbo blowers in it to this day. However, the generating equipment was removed many years ago which is a crying shame. Power was generated on the steel works site right up until 1955, when a large scale power generation complex was commissioned at Richemont, a few miles away. Richmont Power Station was capable of firing a multitude of fuels: primarily the waste gases from the many nearby blast furnace complexes, coal and finally diesel. It had three units. The power station closed in 2009 after the closure of many of the blast furnaces in the surrounding area, and it was subsequently demolished. Ownership of the Florange site passed through many hands, until it finally became the property of the ArcelorMittal steelmaking company. At its height, the site employed around 2,100 people. However in 2012, the blast furnaces were shut down which sparked enormous protests from the employees and surrounding area. ArcelorMittal insisted the closure was temporary and that they were reopen when market conditions improved. However in 2018, it was confirmed that the blast furnaces would not be restarted at all. In April 2023, ArcelorMittal sold the site to Henry-Invest for €500,000. The site is currently being demolished.

The Explore:

I returned to this site in April of 2024 with three friends, after doing the Centrale de La Maxe the day before. We had intended to be there before sunrise but a couple of small spanners in the works meant that we arrived at about 9am in the morning. We began our explore in the Steel Mill side of the site and worked our way around it. Knowing I had previously missed it, I was determined to see it this time.

We made our way over to it, dodging a security patrol, and found our way inside it very easily. This site has been made a lot more difficult to navigate these days. The new owners have gone to town with cutting ladders and staircases down which makes moving around the place very hard. Despite that minor setback, I used my initiative and found a way up inside this amazing piece of engineering. And the photos speak volumes! In the exterior photo, the continuous casting plant is the blue building above the Steel Mill.

Exteriors: