Huta Krolewska

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Blooming Mill

The Huta Kroleweska in Chorzow, Poland was founded in 1797 and started the production of pig iron in 1802. It was named “Königshütte” in honour of the Prussian King.
In 1843 a puddling steel mill and the first rail mill went into production.
Until 1860 four blast furnaces and a coke plant were built.
In 1872 the German painter Adolph Menzel visited the works to create his famous painting “Eisenwalzwerk (moderne Cyclopen)”

adolph menzel eisenwalzwerk

An open hearth melt shop was installed in 1880 and a Bessemer plant was added in 1895. By 1909 the Puddling and Bessemer mills were closed and in 1912 a Thomas converter melt shop was comissioned.
Under Polish administration the plant was renamed “Huta Pilsudski” in 1935. During the German occupation the mill was called Königshütte again and after the war the name of “Huta Kosciuszko” was used.
In 1949 the DEMAG medium and light sections rolling mill was installed.
In the 1950ies new blast furnaces and coke oven batteries were built.
More than 8000 people were employed.
Steel production ceased in 1978, the coke plant was closed in 1982 and the last blast furnace was blown out in 1991. In 1992 the wire rolling mill was closed down.
In 1994 a new walking beam furnace was installed for the heavy sections rolling mill.
In 1997 the light and medium sections mill was modernized.
The Huta Kosciuszko became a shareholders company in 1998.
In 2007 the ArcelorMittal steel company takes over the mill under the name “Huta Krolewska” (Germ., Königshütte).
Huta Krolewska today runs a heavy sections rolling mill mostly for rails and a light and medium sections mill.
Raw materials are provided by the Huta Katowice in Dabrowa Gornica.
Further images at stahlseite.de.
Video done by a french film maker in the 1980ies.

The End Of Another Steel Valley

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Liege

Today the ArcelorMittal steel company announced the closure of the majority of it’s remaining steel production sites in the Meuse valley near Liege, Belgium.
About 1300 of the remaining 2100 steel workers in the valley will loose their jobs.
Apart from the hot strip mill and the coking plant a cold rolling mill and  two galvanisation lines will be closed for good.
The liquid phase steel production was already closed in October 2011.
The Meuse valley around Liege is one of the cradles of the European industrialisation.

Roller Capital

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Though the blast furnaces are long gone, the town of Siegen in Germany is still the capital of roller production. Five foundries still cast rollers for the steel industry, paper mills and other industries.
One of them is the Karl Buch roller foundry.
The company was founded in 1855 by Karl Buch and is located in Siegen- Weidenau since 1867.
The foundry produced alloyed rollers since 1920. In 1955 the cupola furnaces were replaced by modern electric furnaces.
Since 1984 a vertical centrifugal caster for rolls up to 60 tons is in use.
Today rollers up 85 tons can be casted statically.
The foundry is still owned by the Buch family.
Further images at stahlseite.de .

Huta Katowice

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Huta Katowice

The steel mill in Dabrowa Gornica, Poland was built in between 1972 and 1976. It was named “Huta Katowice” after the nearby industrial town.
Three blast furnaces were built in between 1976 and 1987 (hearth diameter 12,00 m).
The mill was taken over by the Mittal Steel Corp. in 2003 and got it’s new name ArcelorMittal Dabrowa Gornica in 2007.
Besides the three blast furnaces (No. 1 is permanently idleld) the mill operates a BOF shop containing three BOF vessels, two continuous casters (one for billets and one for slabs) and two rolling mills (Heavy and medium sections).
Dabrowa Gornica provides primary material for all ArcelorMittal sites in Poland.
The attached coke plant was sold to an external company.
Further images at stahlseite.de .

ArcelorMittal Dabrowa Gornica Map

1: Blast furnace No. 1
2: Blast furnace No. 2
3: Blast furnace No. 3
4: BOF shop
5: Continuous caster
6: Heavy sections rolling mill
7: Medium sections rolling mill
8: Power plant

No More Steel From Bochum ?

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AOD Converter

According to a German newspaper the Finnish Outokumpu steel corporation declared yesterday that they will definitely close their stainless steel mill in Bochum, Germany they only just had bought from ThyssenKrupp in 2016.
Main reason are the high  energy  costs in Germany.
The mills includes an electric arc melt shop built in 1982 (the 145 ton UHP furnace is one of the largest in Germany) and the converter mill built by the Bochumer Verein in 1957.
This BOF shop is the oldest existing in Germany. It was converted into an AOD shop in 1972.
After GM recently announced the closure of it’s Bochum car assembly plant for 2016 this is another heavy blow for Bochum’s economy.
Images at stahlseite.de

A BOF Shop For Gelsenkirchen

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50 years ago the Rheinstahl AG from Essen, Germany finally cancelled it’s plans to built a BOF shop, a continuous caster and a bar rolling mill at it’s foundry site in Gelsenkirchen.
The Schalker Gruben- und Hüttenverein was founded in 1872 and became Europe’s largest iron foundry after the second world war, employing more than 6000 people. The plans provided an investment of more than 300 Mio.German Marks and an initial capacity of 600.000 tons of steel per year. Though the ground (north of the foundry no.3, next to the Wannerstrasse) was already prepared the whole project was called off due to growing overcapacities on the steel market. So the Schalker Verein stayed an iron foundry with four blast furnaces, a pipe casting mill, two fittings-foundries and a foundry for large castings up to 40 tons a piece

The image shows the melt shop of the pipe casting mill where ductile iron pipes with a diameter up to 1,4 meter were casted. The shop included a 160 ton hot metal mixer and five 13 ton induction furnaces and was built in 1966. The hot metal was provided by the Schalker Verein blast furnaces and later came from Thyssen’s Duisburg Meiderich site (today: Landschaftspark Nord).

Schleudergussmaschine

The foundry was sold to Thyssen in 1973.The last blast furnace was closed in 1982. The three remaining blast furnaces were demolished in-between April and September of 1983.
The last pipe was casted in 2004 (meanwhile the mill was sold to the French Pont a Mousson/Saint Gobain company). Most of  the ground is a redevelopment site by now.
Some historic images at Daniel Hinze’s site.

 

 

 

1: Blast furnace no.1 (Hochofen 1)
2: Blast furnace no.2 (Hochofen 2)
3: Blast furnace no.4 (Hochofen 4)
4: Storage with highline (Möllerbunker)
5: Power station (Kraftzentrale)
6: Sinter plant (Sinteranlage)
7: Pipe foundry (Rohrgiesserei)
8: Fittings foundry no.1 ( Formstückgiesserei 1)
9: Foundry for large castings (Grossgusswerk)

The Smallest Hot Rolling Mill In Germany

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The Idealspaten-Bredt company was founded in 1899 by Emil Eckardt under the name „Schaufel- und Spatenfabrik Eckardt & Co“ in Herdecke, Germany.
Built next to the railroad line from Hagen to Dortmund the new company was spezialized in the production of spades and shovels.The company’s speciality, until today, is the Idealspaten. A spade whose blade is hot rolled of one piece of steel.
In 1925 a new rolling mill was built which is still in use today.
In 1928 the company went bancrupt and changed it’s name to “Idealspaten- und Schaufelwalzwerke vorm. Eckardt & Co., G.m.b.H., Herdecke“.
In the 1930ies and during the second world war the rolling mill produced vast numbers of spades and shovels for the Reichsarbeitsdienst and the German Army. More than 500 people worked for the Idealspaten company.
In 1939 the „Teplitzer Eisenwerke, Schaufel- und Zeugwaren-Fabrik AG“, formerly owned by a Jewish family, in the Czech Republic was taken over.
In 1971 Idealspaten fusioned with its competitor from nearby Witten to form the “Idealspaten- und Schaufelwalzwerke A. Bredt GmbH & Co. KG”, the last industrial producer of spades and shovels in Germany. Further images

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Smallest Electric Arc Furnace..

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..I ever saw.

Electric Arc Furnace Slevarna Chomutov

The Slevarna Chomutov foundry is the last relic of the Chomutov (Komotau) branch of the Poldihütte steel works from Kladno,CZ.
This mill was founded in 1889 by the German/Austrian entrepreneur Karl Wittgenstein.
In 1916 the mill in Chomutov was added and went into production in 1920.
Main products were speciality steel castings, wire and springs.
After the German annexation of the Czech Republic in 1938-39 the Chomutov plant became part of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring producing armor plate for the German Wehrmacht.
In 1939 a new 5 ton electric arc furnace, manufactured by FIAT in Italy, was installed and is still in use today.
After the second world war the mill was nationalized and combined with the nearby Mannesmann tube rolling mill.
After the privatisation in 1999 both mills were seperated again.
Slevarna Chomutov a.s. today is a steel foundry that runs two electric arc furnaces and produces abrasive wear resistant steel castings up to 4,5 tons a piece. Further viewing at the Stahlseite.