The process of turning coal into coke is a particularly dirty business, which is more than obvious when walking around in the remains of this coking plant. Everything just everywhere is black and covered with thick layers of soot and tar. Slicks and other spill of black coal tar surely do not make the place brighter either. It must have been a hell of a place to work at when it was operational.

This Belgian coking plant, located adjacent to an equally closed coal mine seemingly has a long and old history. The need for coke to the large Belgian steelworks in the Vallonia area was enormous, but the structural change in the European steelmaking business gradually made inland plants like this one uneconomical as investments in larger steelworks shifted to plants at costal locations. As the inferior Belgian coal was pushed off the market by lower priced coal, primarily from the United States as sea freights dramatically dropped in price in the late 1950s, the coal mines were closed one by one. Despite years of subsidising, transporting the coal to the coking plant from the large harbors to the coking plant and then sending the coke back was simply too expensive.

Further, today's steelmaking processes require far less coal per ton of iron ore reduced in the blast furnaces. Further, as the low-yielding domestic "Minette ores" used some fifty years ago were replaced by high-yielding Swedish- and Brazilian iron ore pellets, the coke requirements have been cut by more than 75%. Good for the environment but bad for coal mines and coking plants like this one...

Another interesting aspect is that the energy needs in the European coal producing countries was in 1950 covered to around 90% by domestic coal. As fuel oil from the middle east became widely available around 1955, industrial and residential heating gradually abandoned coal and coke as fuel. Locomotives and sea vessels rapidly switched from coal to Diesel and bunker oil. The large investments in nuclear power during the 1960s and 1970s together with the recent years steep increase in usage of natural gas have entirely rewritten the map for Europe's coal industry. As there was a considerable socio-economic aspect of domestic mining, the long painful downward journey was stretched over a much longer period than necessary due to massive subsidies, both from a state and the EU.

Although the plant is nothing but a disaster by all possible means, it is really fascinating in its sense of "silent chaos". Excavators have recently started to demolish the site and most likely it is just a matter of time before it is all turned into rubble. The heritage from this coking plant must be a difficult and expensive task to clean up. In the vicinity of the mine and plant are endless and enormous piles of refuse of coal and coke and the area is soaked with spills of creosote. Most likely, other nasty coking by-products such as phenole, benzole and other benzene compounds are present there in rich quantities as well.
.