In October 2011, the multinational ArcelorMittal decided to shut down the hot rolling mill at the Liège steelworks. Exactly ten years later, not a single worker remains within the vast infrastructure that still looms over the landscape, yet the sense of humiliation is still palpable. The workers from the steel basin, who once tamed the molten iron flowing through the casting halls, now unload planes full of Chinese e-commerce goods… 

 But we must turn the page. The closure of the Ougrée coking plant in June 2014 snuffed out the trade unions’ last hopes and made the air in the Liège valley breathable once more. The demolition of blast furnace 6 (HF6), which had always towered like a black crow over the centre of Seraing and now sank down, exhausted, made the inevitable new era tangible in December 2016. In 2018, the last hope that some still harboured for a highly theoretical reopening of the Ougrée B blast furnace (HFB) died, after which demolition permits followed to raze everything to the ground.