Cockerill-Ougrée
| Industry | Steel industry |
|---|---|
| Successor | Usinor, then Arcelor, ultimately ArcelorMittal as the subsidiary "ArcelorMittal Liege" |
| Founded | 1981 |
| Defunct | 1999 |
| Headquarters | Liege, Belgium |
Cockerill-Sambre was a group of Belgian steel manufacturers headquartered in Seraing (province of Liège), on the Meuse River, and in Charleroi, on the shore of the Sambre River.
The Cockerill-Sambre group was formed in 1981 by the merger of two Belgian steel groups; Cockerill based in Seraing (Liege province), and Hainaut-Sambre based in Charleroi in the province of Hainaut; both being the result of post second world war consolidations of the Belgian steel industry.
The company inherited a steel industry with significant debts and production overcapacity based on blast furnace production rather than electric furnace recycling, with numerous factory sites in constrained city locations, and adversely affected by competition in the export market from new steel producing countries such as South Korea and Brasil. The need to streamline was complicated by regional dependence on employment by the steel industry.
It was merged into Usinor in 1998, and after 2002 was part of the Arcelor group. As of 2010 the bulk of the group is part of the ArcelorMittal multinational steel group, where it is known as ArcelorMittal Liege.
The Cockerill group's name came from the British born industrialist John Cockerill who founded the John Cockerill company (John Cockerill & Cie) in 1817. In the first few decades of its existence it rose to become a major integrated steel company, not only producing iron in blast furnaces, but also producing machines and other articles from the metal. After Cockerill's death in 1840 the company became the state owned Société anonyme John Cockerill, and an international scale producer of iron and steel metal and products.
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