Vieille Montagne

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Logo VM

The Société Anonyme des Mines et Fonderies de Zinc de la Vieille-Montagne , or Vieille Montagne ( VM ) for short , was a Belgian company for zinc extraction and processing. It was founded on May 24, 1837 by the Belgian banker and industrialist François-Dominique Mosselman , and in 1989 it became part of the Union Minière group, later Umicore .

history

  • Jean-Jacques Dony

  • François-Dominique Mosselman

The starting point of the subsequent establishment of the Vieille Montagne were the one known for centuries zinc deposits in the town of Kelmis and on the other by the year 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte mineral rights at the local personally to Galmeimine "Old Mountain" for Jean-Jacques Dony , the namesake of the future Company became. A year later, Dony set up his first zinc factory in Saint-Léonard near Liège and at the same time researched more efficient methods of zinc extraction. His development of a new reduction furnace and its patenting in 1810 finally led to an economic breakthrough; as early as 1812 he was able to open an additional rolling mill in the Angleur district of Liège .

However, the modernization of his factory in Saint-Léonard with the new furnaces and the expansion of his mine in Kelmis as well as the establishment of the rolling mill in Angleur and bad marketing meant that Dony was financially overwhelmed. He then made his accountant Hector Chaudet a partner and henceforth traded his company under the name “Dony et Compagnie”. Due to the beginning of the collapse of the French Empire and the zinc market that was completely shattered, Dony was also left with gigantic zinc stocks and had to store more than 80% of the production, which meant that the bankruptcy could no longer be stopped. On April 25, 1813, the Brussels banker François-Dominique Mosselman finally acquired the insolvent company at a scrap price.

Zinc works in Neutral-Moresnet, around 1850
Zinkwerke Angleur, company headquarters until 1989

For Mosselman it was advantageous that after the Congress of Vienna the Netherlands and Prussia could not agree on who should own the area around Kelmis with its mines and factories after the withdrawal of the French. When this area became Neutral Moresnet through the Aachen Border Treaty of 1816 , Mosselman was independent in terms of labor and tax law and was able to further expand the mining operations there at his own discretion and help it to flourish again, which also led to the founding of the Belgian state after the Belgian Revolution nothing changed from 1830. Initially, Mosselman expanded the company to include two smaller rolling mills in the French towns of Heudreville-sur-Eure and Valcanville, as well as another zinc smelter in Neu-Moresnet, and also acquired the rights to use a rolling mill in Dartford, England, for five years . Finally, together with parts of his family and influential supporters, on May 24, 1837, under Belgian stock corporation law and with Belgian and French funds, he founded the "Société Anonyme des Mines et Fonderies de Zinc de la Vieille-Montagne", based in Angleur, in which the factories were incorporated , Mines, shares and concessions of "Dony et Compagnie" and which was the only zinc producer in Belgium to already produce 1833 tons of zinc.

After François-Dominique Mosselman's death, his son Alfred Mosselman , who had already been entrusted with the management of the zinc factory in Valcanville in 1832, took over the management of the parent company from 1840. He created a kind of holding company called "Mosselman Brothers and Sisters", in which the Belgian National Bank, under the direction of Charles de Brouckère, invested around 800,000 francs in 1838. Brouckère later succeeded Alfred Mosselman in the management of the Vieille Montagne until 1846.

  • Charles Le Hon

  • Charles de Morny

Charles Le Hon , François-Dominique Mosselman's son-in-law and husband of his daughter Fanny (1808-1880), was chairman of the VM's administrative board at the time and, in his capacity as a member of the Belgian Chamber of Deputies and ambassador in Paris, was responsible for the political connections in Belgium as well as in France. Through an expert report he prepared for the Belgian government, he succeeded in ensuring that the concession originally granted to Dony for the "Alter Berg" mine in Kelmis, the nucleus of the Vieille Montagne, was permanently transferred to the new company and the company thus The right and the monopoly obtained to exploit them according to their ideas. Charles de Morny , a half-brother of Napoléon III. and longtime lover of Fanny Le Hon, became an active shareholder in VM in 1837 and an influential ambassador for the zinc industry.

  • Louis-Alexandre Saint-Paul de Sinçay

  • Gaston Saint-Paul de Sinçay

In 1847, Louis-Alexandre Saint-Paul de Sinçay (1815–1890) took over as managing director and director of the Belgian plants and from 1856 as general director of VM. He was followed by his son Gaston Saint-Paul de Sinçay (1854–1938), who first worked as inspector from 1879, from 1884 as secretary of the board of directors and from 1890 to 1938 as general director of the VM.

The time under father and son de Sinçay was the most successful in the company's history. Louis-Alexandre St. Paul de Sinçay decided in the 1850s for a remarkable expansion strategy and was involved in various companies across Europe such as the "Société des mines et usine à zinc de la Prusse Rhénane", the "Société Carbonnière Valentin Cocq" , the "Société de la Meuse" and the "Société Flône" either held shares or took them over as a subsidiary. He also initially participated as a shareholder in the establishment of the Silesian AG for mining and zinc smelting operations and sent members of the VM to its supervisory and administrative boards; however, this engagement was ended after about four years. In de Sinçay's time, production rose from 5941 tons in 1845 to around 18,000 tons in 1855 and the number of employees in Belgium alone from 1,100 in 1840 to around 12,000 in 1900. In addition, Louis-Alexandre St. Paul de Sinçay was in the In 1885, he played a key role in the establishment of a national and international zinc cartel, which was responsible for regulating prices and determining production quantities in the European member states and in which his son Gaston was also involved as a member of the executive committee from 1901 to 1909. Among other things, it was decided to set production at 255,000 tons of raw zinc for the German group, to which both the Rhenish Prussian and Silesian producers belonged, 174,000 tons for the Franco-Belgian group and 38,000 tons for the English group.

At the turn of the century, Vieille Montagne moved into neighboring production areas and began producing sulfuric acid at some locations from 1899 and from 1910 with the production of lead , the raw materials of which were a by-product of zinc smelting. The company continued to focus on its core product zinc and in 1905 still had seven mining and smelting sites in Belgium, eleven in France, eight in its colonies in North Africa, three in Germany, two in Sweden, four in England and four in Italy and two in Spain as well as smaller agencies on the American continent.

At the end of the First World War , the status of the works changed to Neutral Moresnet, as this area had been dissolved by the Treaty of Versailles and now officially assigned to Belgium. In the following ten years or so, the entire Vieille Montagne company experienced a severe post-war depression and was also faced with competition from new zinc producers in the USA, Canada and Mexico. In order to counteract this, VM was the first company in Europe to switch the thermal zinc production process to the electrolytic process at the French site in Viviez in 1922 , which led to a reduction in cost through a significant increase in furnace output together with further technical innovations. At the beginning of the 1930s, the company benefited from the global industrial boom and was able to build on its old successes.

Alexandre Galopin

In 1938, the trained engineer Joseph van Oirbeek took over the management of the group as the successor to the late Gaston Saint-Paul de Sinçay and a few years later was confronted with the effects of the Second World War , caused by the invasion of the German armed forces and their takeover of control Created through the VM production process in both Belgium and France. At his side was the chairman of the board of directors Alexandre Galopin (1879–1944), who had also been governor of the Société générale de Belgique since 1923 and founder of its subsidiary "Union minière du Haut Katanga" in 1905, with which the Vieille Montagne would later merge . During the war, Galopin advocated an active “presence policy”, known in Belgium as “Doctrine Galopin”, according to which, under certain conditions, a certain cooperation with the new rulers would make more sense than starving the Belgian population. After individual plants had been destroyed or damaged by bombing during the war, sales fell to 60,000 tons across the company by 1945.

After the war years, the company tried to quickly rebuild its production facilities with the latest technology and return to its old size. It was helpful that the plants in Sweden had been spared from destruction and that a large supply of minerals had been stored there, which was the basis for a new start. At the same time, work was continued in the following years on the process efficiency from the dissolution of the raw materials to electrolytic reduction, so that at the end of the 1950s a value of 99.995% zinc was achieved for almost all production and production started again in the early 1970s of 200,000 tons was reached.

However, this value could not be maintained because on the one hand the oil crisis of 1974 and on the other hand the falling zinc prices due to overcapacities and falling demand led to massive falls in sales and the closure or closure of several branches. In 1980 Albert Ghysens succeeded the general director Ferdinand Bodson, who had been in office since 1966; he was followed after just one year by the engineer Jean André, who in turn was replaced in 1988 by Ferdinand Crabeels. Under his leadership, a solution to the ongoing economic problems of the VM emerged. In 1988, the Franco-Belgian group SUEZ took over as the “ White Knight ” the “Société générale de Belgique” threatened by a hostile takeover, including its subsidiary “Union minière du Haut Katanga”. The "Union minière" for its part merged a year later with the "Société générale métallurgique d'Hoboken", another subsidiary of the "Société générale", the "Zinkfabrik Overpelt" and the Vieille Montagne to form the new group "Union miniére group" based in Brussels, which renamed itself Umicore in 2001 and whose zinc processing division was finally sold to Nyrstar in 2007 .

Working conditions and social benefits

The production and processing of zinc was associated with high health risks due to its high content of sulfur and heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. The vapors inhaled during processing led to chronic coughs, the so-called “hut vomit”, back problems, split hands and poisoning, and many of the zinc workers were disabled by the age of 45 . Since the protection of the workers could only be guaranteed to a limited extent according to the state of the art at the time, individual branches ran a company health insurance, a disability and pension fund, relief and pension funds, provision of food at reduced prices, creation of free schools for children of employees, old people's homes for pensioners and orphans and other social benefits. In addition, attempts were made at individual locations to limit the high fluctuation by providing apartments and, above all, to tie qualified workers to the company.

However, the paternalistic system of corporate management gave the workers no legal right to these social policy measures, such as support and welfare funds, discounted housing, the admission of retired workers to an old people's home, or to reasonable wages. As a result, an organized labor movement emerged in some locations, who wanted to fight for a decent life and health as well as for the enforcement of workers' rights in the zinc industry through resistance and strikes. In 1901, a local group of the “Christian Miners' Trade Union” was established in the Neutral-Moresnet plant, but the management fought it with all means, including layoffs. After official membership had become too risky, the workers tried to organize themselves into "secret societies", but these were undermined by informers who feared the possible loss of "minor" privileges. As a result, at least for this location, any open, trade union activity by the workers there was completely suppressed.

Even in the 20th century it was difficult for the unions to assert themselves against the company management, as evidenced, for example, by the nine-week strike in 1971 for higher wages and better air quality in the Balen / Wezel branch, which was shown in 2011 as a film entitled "Groenten uit Balen" was documented.

Takeovers and investments (selection)

Belgium

In the motherland of the Vieille Montagne, it all began with the concession granted to Dony for the “Alter Berg” mine in Kelmis, whose mining had to be stopped at the beginning of the 20th century. However, Kelmis remained the location of a zinc washing plant and agency until 1951, for which the new Vieille-Montagne management building was built in 1905 , today the seat of the Vieille Montagne Museum . Other plants and locations in Belgium included:

  • the foundry in Saint-Léonard near Liège, set up by Dony in 1806, whose work ceased in 1880.
Vieille Montagne, Angleur
  • the rolling mill in the Angleur district of Liège, also opened by Dony in 1812, and the zinc smelter attached to it in 1838, which was closed in 1880 Angleur remained the seat of the entire company until the merger with Umicore and was then closed and the company headquarters relocated to Brussels.
  • the rolling mill in Tilff, a district of Esneux, acquired in 1838 .
  • the works, mines and land near Flône in the municipality of Amay on the Meuse, acquired by VM in 1852 through its merger with the “Société Flône”, which was in liquidation . The location experienced a significant upswing under the new management and could be maintained until the beginning of the 1980s.
Valentin Cocq zinc works around 1855
  • the works of the "Société Carbonnière Valentin Cocq" in Grâce-Hollogne near Liège, which were originally a network of pure mining operations, which were expanded in 1850 by a zinc white factory and a year later by a zinc smelter, transferred by the takeover in 1853 were. In 1887 VM separated from the mines, but kept the zinc factories, which supplied all the zinc white for the company and in 1912 were among the largest in the world with a production of 40,000 tons. The site was badly destroyed in 1944, but was subsequently rebuilt and only given up in 1982.
  • The factory in Balen near Antwerp , built in 1887, was founded specifically to treat zinc ores from the Swedish mines in Åmmeberg and to expand the product range to include sulfuric acid and lead . The company complex consisted of a roasting works, a factory for the production of sulfuric acid, a lead foundry, a lead rolling mill and a plant for processing cadmium and various other products. By 1914, the site had more than 1200 employees, successfully survived all subsequent crises and is now part of Umicore.

France

Even before the establishment of the VM, France played a major role in the choice of location, as on the one hand Mosselman, as director of his Paris private bank, had invested French money in the establishment and on the other hand both his son-in-law, the Belgian ambassador in Paris Charles Le Hon, and his Business partner Charles de Morny had excellent contacts in the highest political and social circles, which was what made the expansion possible. The plants and locations in France included:

  • two small rolling mills in Houx, a district of Valcanville, and in Hom, a district of Heudreville-sur-Eure, which were both set up in 1820 under the direction of Alfred Mosselmann and in which rolled sheets, pipes and channels were manufactured. The poor connection of these plants to the markets led to the cessation of production in 1848 and liquidation in 1860.
Rolling mills in Bray-et-Lû around 1850
  • the rolling mill in Bray-et-Lû in the Val-d'Oise department , which was taken over in 1838 and which has survived all crises and still employs 120 people today as part of Umicore.
  • the Viviez and Decazeville coal mines, taken over in 1871, as well as the rolling mill and zinc smelter in Boisse-Penchot , all in the Aveyron department . These locations were among the most important industrial companies in the region and the number of employees at VM rose from 200 in the year of the takeover to around 900 at the turn of the century to 2000 in 1917. This marked increase resulted from the fact that the works in Viviez with their high-quality zinc were important for the manufacture of ammunition and explosives in the First World War. In 1922, the conversion to the electrolytic process took place at this location, for which VM had the Thuriés dam built in the tributary area of ​​the Viaur to generate energy. Raw zinc production in Viviez was discontinued in 1987 after VM merged with “Asturienne France” and relocated production to the plants of its subsidiary “Royal Asturian Company of Mines” in Auby , which was geographically more favorable. The Auby branch was also taken over by what later became Umicore and its Nyrstar division, as were the plants in Decazeville and Viviez, which regained a foothold in 1988 with the establishment of the “Anthra-Zinc” industrial plant, which in 2006 was one of the largest in the world Production facilities for prepatinated zinc.
  • the mining fields of the "Société des Zincs Français" in the Gard and Hérault departments , which were taken over by VM after their liquidation in 1883.
  • Smaller acquisitions such as the rolling mill in Dangu in 1884 , from 1887 the rolling mills in Hautmont in the Nord department , in 1915 the zinc foundry in Creil , which remained in operation until 1992, and in 1915 the zinc and lead mines in Saint-Félix-de-Pallières .

Germany

After the introduction of customs barriers by the German Customs Union , exporting from Belgium or France to Prussia was no longer worthwhile for the VM. Therefore, under Louis-Alexandre St. Paul de Sinçay at the beginning of the 1850s, the expansion to Prussia was pushed forward in order to be able to take over prospecting concessions as “domestic operations” and set up production facilities. To this end, in 1852 he first founded the rescue company “Société des Mines et Usines à Zinc de la Prusse-Rhénane”, in which the companies “Société Antonius” with the zinc smelter in Mülheim-Eppinghofen , the “Société Nassau” of Charles, were in liquidation Leconte with a zinc smelter and a zinc white factory in Essen-Borbeck and Charles Rochaz's “Société d'Antonius” company with a large part of the mines in the Bensberg ore district . In a second step, Sinçay merged the rescue company with the Vieille Montagne on May 26, 1853. After the National Socialists came to power , the French company name was a disadvantage and in 1934 the “Aktiengesellschaft des Altenbergs für Bergbau und Zinkhüttenbetrieb”, later “Altenberg Metallwerke AG”, was founded as a 100% subsidiary of Vieille Montagne, all of them in German Received abundant wealth.

The VM branches in Prussia were essentially limited to three core areas:

Altenberg zinc factory, today LVR Museum
  • the Ruhr area with the Altenberg zinc factory as the central production location, specializing in the manufacture of sheet metal for the construction sector. For this purpose, VM first acquired a plot of land in the Lipper Heide in Oberhausen , where a zinc rolling mill was built in 1853. In 1855 new zinc smelters were built in Borbeck and Eppinghoven and in 1857 the plant in Oberhausen received an additional roasting smelter, which caused complaints from 1884 onwards about the high levels of sulfuric acid in the air and which was abandoned in 1928 for these reasons. Environmental problems were also the reason for the final closure of the Ruhrgebietswerke in 1981 and for the conversion of their buildings to the LVR-Industriemuseum Oberhausen and the administration of the LVR-Industriemuseum .
  • some non-ferrous metal ore mines in the Bensberg ore district in the Bergisches Land , including:
Lüderich mine, watercolor by Wilhelm Scheiner
    • the Lüderich mine in the Steinenbrück district of Overather , which actually consisted of four individual pits and was one of the first to be taken over by VM in 1853. A year later, the award for the mining of blende, lead, copper and zinc ores followed and between 1858 and 1861 the expansion by eleven additional mine fields. In 1897, a mechanical processing plant was built and put into operation, which for a long time was considered one of the largest plants in Europe. At the beginning of the 1970s, the supplies in the pits were running low and on October 31, 1978 the entire mine operation including the processing plant was closed.
    • the Victor mine in the Rösrath district of Hoffnungsthal , for which a first request for encouragement was submitted in 1853 , but which was not approved until 1865.
    • the Klaproth mine in the Bergisch Gladbach district of Bockenberg , which was muted by the VM in 1857 and also only confirmed by the mining authority in 1866.
    • the Castor mine in the village of Kastor near Engelskirchen , which was lent to the VM in 1859 with its lead, zinc, copper, spate iron stone and pebble deposits and was operated until 1906. After trial work on the mine field had been approved from 1922, operations were resumed until the final shutdown in 1929.
    • the Bruno II mine in the Loope district of Engelskirchen , which was muted and lent to the VM in 1859. Final confirmation took place two years later, after there had previously been disagreements about the modalities. The mining was stopped in 1908 and resumed in 1924 until it had to be finally stopped in 1931 for reasons of profitability.
    • the Arago mine near Overath, which was taken over by VM in 1873 and operated until an unknown date.
    • The Penny mine in Mohlscheid near Seelscheid already had an eventful history before it was operated by VM from 1899 to 1908.
    • the Hermannsfreude and Hermannsfreude I mines near Rösrath were not taken over by VM until 1939. Nothing is known about the operating activities.
  • some ore mines in the Rhein-Sieg district , in particular:
  • as well as individual pits outside the core areas mentioned, such as the Bendisberg mine near Langenfeld in the Eifel , which was operated by VM from 1915 to 1957, or the Silbersand mine near Mayen , which VM took over in 1852 and closed in 1912.

Other countries

In addition to the activities in the core countries of the Vieille Montagne, Belgium, France and Prussia, the company was interested early on in gaining a foothold in other European and non-European countries in order to guarantee operational reliability even in times of crisis by extracting mineral resources there. In particular, the company was involved in:

Zinkgruvan, Sweden
  • in Sweden , where VM opened the Zinkgruvan mine in 1857 near Isåsen with Övre and Nedre Knalla in the village of Åmmeberg ( Örebro län ), around 175 km southwest of Stockholm , which was to become one of the largest underground mines in Europe. A year later, VM also received approval to build the new Åmmebergs järnväg railway line to transport the ore to the port, from where it was transported by ship over the Göta Canal to the Hisingen port in Gothenburg . Zinkgruvan was acquired by North Limited in 1995 and by the Rio Tinto Group in 2000 , before it was finally acquired by the Swedish-Canadian mining company Lundin Mining in 2004.
  • in Italy , where VM took over the mines in Iglesias on Sardinia in 1865 , founded a mining agency and in 1871 secured the concession for another mine on the island and in 1889 for the Casa Conti mine in the province of Bergamo .
  • in England , where VM acquired the Nenthead and Tynedale mines in 1896 , which made the company the largest zinc producer on the island. In 1949 VM transferred the English branch of "Anglo-Austral Mines, Ltd."
Calcining plant in Limenaria
  • in Greece , where VM 1925 obtained the 13 concessions for the mining and processing of zinc, lead, silver, iron and copper ores in Limenaria on the island of Thasos from the “Mining Company Fr. Speidel, Thasos-Pforzheim “Auctioned. As a result, the “ Société Anonyme Hellénique Métallurgique et Minière (SAMM)” was founded, which rebuilt and modernized the facilities destroyed in the First World War and added five new furnaces. Due to the global economic crisis , the plant had to be shut down from 1930 to 1936. In December 1944, the businessman Georgos Apostolopoulos from Kavala took over SAMM, which ceased operations in 1963 and was liquidated in 1969.
  • in Algeria , where VM initially received the concession from the French colonial government in 1872 for the mines of Hammam in the province of Constantine as well as for Aïcha and Djebba, whose galmei deposits were discovered by geologists at VM in 1869. In the course of this, she participated in the expansion of a railway line to the port city of Annaba , from where her ores could be shipped. VM geologists were also involved a few years later in the discovery of the Ouarsenis mine between the cities of Tiaret and Orléansville in the Ouarsenis Mountains of the same name , for which VM was granted the concession in 1890.
  • in Tunisia , then also a French colony, where VM obtained the concessions for zinc and lead in Djebel-ben-Amar in 1876 and in 1900 for Djebba and again for Djebel-ben-Amar in the Beja governorate .
  • in other countries such as Spain, Wales, Mexico and the USA, where VM involvement was only sporadic and without lasting effects.

Trivia

The French landscape painter Adolphe Maugendre specialized in industrial images and in the course of this he made lithographs of almost all the branches of the Vieille Montagne , which impressively depict the situation in and around the works in the 19th century.

literature

  • Peter Friedemann: The beginnings of the Western European zinc industry using the example of the Galmei mines "Vieille Montagne" (Altenberg): From French mining law 1791/1810 to Prussian mining law reform 1865 , in: Der Anschnitt 69 , Bochum 2017 pdf
  • René Brion: De la Mine a Mars , Lannoo uitgeverij 2006, p. 16ff digitalisat (French)
  • Susan Becker: Multinationality has different faces: Forms of international business activity of the Société Anonyme des Mines et Fonderies de Zinc de la Vieille Montagne and the Metallgesellschaft before 1914 , Unternehmensgeschichte 14, Stuttgart 2002 digitalisat
  • RG Max Liebig: Zinc and cadmium and their extraction from ores and by-products , Springer Verlag 2013 digitalisat

Web links

Commons : Vieille-Montagne Mining Company  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Décret impérial 1460 relatif à l'adjudication des mines de calamine dites de la Vieille-Montagne
  2. ^ Delforge: Louis-Alexandre Saint-Paul de Sinçay , in: Dictionnaire des Wallons 2013
  3. ^ Paul Delforge: Alexandre Galopin , in: Dictionnairre des Wallons 2014
  4. ↑ Herbert Ruland: The development of the Christian labor movement in the area of ​​today's Kelmis community - La Calamine , on Grenzgeschichte.eu
  5. ↑ Groenten uit Balen in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  6. ↑ Arnaus Peters: L'histoire méconnue de l'industrie belge du zinc , on the cultural pages of the University of Liège (French), October 2012
  7. ↑ Francois Wouters: 1889 - VM Balen, from Zink or Roaster and lead smelter to zinc smelter , article about the Belgian branches on vieillemontagnehistory.com from 2018 (English)
  8. ↑ Homepage of the Balen / Wezel factory
  9. ↑ Umicore VMZinc Leader mondial
  10. ↑ Daniel Sobanski: The vieille Montagne in Germany , article about the German branches on viellemontagnehistory.com (English)
  11. ^ Burhard Zeppenfeld: Zinkhütte Altenberg , on Rhenish industrial culture
  12. ↑ Holdings 80 Aktiengesellschaft des Altenbergs für Bergbau und Zinkhüttenbetrieb, Overath-Untereschbach (Rhineland) on archive.nrw
  13. ^ Lundin Mining - technical report for the Zinkgruvan Mine, Sweden , Wardall Armstrong International, 2017
  14. ↑ Alastair Robertson: In Memoriam - Nenthead or dressing mill , article about the English branches on vieillemontagnehistory.com (English)
  15. ↑ René Brion and Jean-Louis Moreau: La Vieille Montagne in Algérie , report on the Algerian branches of the VM from 2018 (French)