Creusot-Loire was a French engineering conglomerate, formed from factories in

Le Creusot Le Creusot () is a Communes of France, commune and industrial town in the Saône-et-Loire Departments of France, department, Regions of France, region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, eastern France. The inhabitants are known as Creusotins. Formerl ...

and Châteauneuf, Loire. The Creusot-Loire subsidiary of

ArcelorMittal ArcelorMittal S.A. is a Luxembourg-based multinational steel manufacturing corporation, headquartered in Luxembourg City. It is ranked second on the list of steel producers behind Baowu, and had an annual crude steel production of 58 millio ...

also includes an Innovation, Research and Development centre for the group.

History

The group was formed in 1970 as a result of Compagnie des ateliers et forges de la Loire (owned by Marine-Firminy) and (owned by Schneider) merger. The Société des Forges et Ateliers du Creusot had absorbed the

Société métallurgique d'Imphy Groupe Lactalis S.A. (doing business as Lactalis) is a French Multinational corporation, multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, Mayenne, France. The company's former name was Besnier S.A. Lactal ...

in 1968. The enterprise developed what has become known as the Creusot-Loire Uddeholm (CLU) converter process, which was developed to minimize the need of argon, and which was first erected on an industrial scale in the 1970s at

Degerfors Degerfors () is a locality and the seat of Degerfors Municipality, Örebro County, Sweden, with 7,160 inhabitants in 2010. Degerfors is the sixth-largest city in Örebro County. It is located at the southern shore of lake Möckeln, 13 km (8 mi) so ...

. The group was affected by the 1970s

steel crisis Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that demonstrates improved mechanical properties compared to the pure form of iron. Due to steel's high elastic modulus, yield strength, fracture strength and low raw material cost, steel is one of ...

, and was not able to pay a

dividend A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders, after which the stock exchange decreases the price of the stock by the dividend to remove volatility. The market has no control over the stock price on open on the ex ...

after 1977. In 1984 the organisation became bankrupt with debts of $633 million; the company's owner Empain-Schneider rejected state aid as the conditions included giving away control of another subsidiary Jeumont Industrie. At some point near 2000, Imphy SA owned the

Invar Invar, also known generically as FeNi36 (64FeNi in the US), is a nickel–iron alloy notable for its uniquely low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE or α). The name ''Invar'' comes from the word ''invariable'', referring to its relative lac ...

trademark. At some point, the organization may have been part of

Usinor Usinor was a French steel making group formed in 1948. The group was merged with Sacilor in 1986, becoming Usinor-Sacilor and was privatised in 1995, and renamed Usinor in 1997. In 2001 it merged with Arbed (Luxembourg) and Aceralia (Spain) to ...

, which became in the 2001/2 restructuring the company known as

Arcelor Arcelor S.A. was the world's largest steel producer in terms of turnover and the second largest in terms of steel output, with a turnover of €30.2 billion and shipments of 45 million metric tons of steel in 2004. The company was created in 2002 ...

. Before September 2003, the organisation had been renamed Industeel and absorbed by

. In September 2015, Industeel was touting its homogeneous armour products and its ballistic protection steel plates. It boasted that 5mm of its MARS 600 product could stop a NATO 7.62mm round at a distance of 10m. By February 2018, the organization had been rebaptized Industeel France and was then owned by

. The French arm had been augmented by Industeel Belgium, which operated with 1200 employees in

Charleroi Charleroi (, , ; ) is a city and a municipality of Wallonia, located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. It is the largest city in both Hainaut and Wallonia. The city is situated in the valley of the Sambre, in the south-west of Belgium, not ...

. In November 2020, ArcelorMittal had decided to sell the unit.

References

Sources

* * Steel companies of France Engineering companies of France French companies established in 1970 {{France-company-stub