ArcelorMittal to acquire Liberty’s Belgian steel assets
Leading steelmaker ArcelorMittal’s offer for galvanised steel production lines in near Liège, Belgium, has been accepted by trustees managing the distribution of assets for Liberty Galati’s Belgian operations, following its declaration of bankruptcy back in April.
The agreement, signed today, authorises ArcelorMittal Belgium to take over all facilities at Liberty’s Flémalle plant, including hot-dip galvanising line Galva 5, repair lines, and the water treatment plant.
“The galvanising line in Flémalle will allow us to expand our ability to manufacture a high added-value product for our automotive and construction customers across Europe,” said CEO of ArcelorMittal Belgium, Frederik Van de Velde. “We look forward to working with the skilled team in Flémalle and to restoring the plant to operating at a world-class level.”
ArcelorMittal expects to finalise its acquisition in the coming weeks, and will complete approximately nine months of maintenance and investment work to restore the line as production at the site has been inactive for a prolonged period.
ArcelorMittal originally owned the Flémalle assets, but sold the plant – and many of its other European assets – to Liberty to satisfy the European Commission’s competition concerns connected to its 2018 acquisition of Italy’s Ilva, and its Taranto steelworks.
In the meantime, ArcelorMittal has been supplying steel to Flémalle during Liberty’s tenure, and is said to have been a substantial creditor of Liberty Belgium prior to its bankruptcy. ArcelorMittal has since exited its stake in Ilva – renamed Acciaierie d’Italia – effectively bringing much of the last seven years of M&A full-circle.
Liberty’s other assets are suffering from financial challenges across Europe: its Dudelange site in Luxembourg declared bankruptcy in late 2024, and attempts to find a buyer faltered back in May after Turkish steel group Tosyali Holdings withdrew from the deal, citing European safeguard amendments.
In the UK, Liberty Special Steels is also facing liquidation or sale, with its recent winding up petition adjourned for eight weeks to 16 July, in order to finalise a potential deal with a “third party purchaser.”
Benjamin Steven Journalist, Steel
EUROMETAL at Belmetal Steel Warriors 2025 closing event in Deinze
On Friday, 23 May 2025, EUROMETAL was proud to participate in the Steel Warriors closing event, organised by Belmetal at the Brielpoort in Deinze.
This unique initiative brought together 14 school classes from across Flanders and Wallonia, as part of the national competition Steel Warriors – powered by Belmetal. Over the course of the school year, students worked in teams to develop creative steel-related projects, present them to a jury, and promote them on social media.
The final event celebrated the students’ dedication, talent, and teamwork, culminating in the awarding of “The Drop”, specially designed trophy by artist Kevin Oyen, to the winning team.
EUROMETAL congratulates all participants and applauds the efforts of Belmetal — particularly President Vanessa Espeel and Managing Director Dominique Laurent — for their commitment to promoting steel among younger generations.
Initiatives like these are essential for building bridges between education and the steel industry, and for inspiring the next generation of talent in our sector.
EUROMETAL’s participation also offered a valuable opportunity to engage with Belgian steel distributors and event partners, further strengthening ties with the national steel distribution community.
Liberty Liège declared bankrupt by court
Belgium-based steelmaker Liberty Liège, a subsidiary of Romania-based Liberty Galati, has officially been declared bankrupt by the Liège Business Court due to the inability to raise the necessary funds to maintain its assets during the silent bankruptcy proceedings, according to local media reports.
In the coming days, 520-550 employees, who had not been paid for several months, will be laid off and access unemployment benefits.
The new administrators appointed a few days ago will try to find a potential buyer for the company, which had been shut down for two years.
ArcelorMittal committed to decarbonization investment in Belgium
Earlier this week, numerous reports emerged in Belgium media that ArcelorMittal was planning to only invest in electric-arc furnaces (EAFs) at the site.
“We’ve not said that [the DRI investment is cancelled]. Although there have been have been some reports in the Belgian media [on November 19]… nothing has changed. We’ve been saying all year we are working on the engineering for our European decarbonization projects and that remains the case – no final decisions have been made,” the spokesperson told Fastmarkets.
In September 2021, ArcelorMittal has signed a letter of intent with the Belgian and Flemish governments to support it’s €1.1 ($1.2) billion investment in
decarbonisation at the Ghent site.
The company also announced plans to build a 2.5 million tonne DRI plant and two electric-arc furnaces in Ghent and said the new facilities would operate in parallel with a state-of-the-art blast furnace (BF) that is set to use waste wood and plastics as an alternative to fossil carbon.
Currently, ArcelorMittal Ghent operates BFs with a combined capacity of more than 4 million tpy of pig iron per year, along with a 5 million tpy basic-oxygen furnace (BOF).
The site produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized coil.
The company’s plan to switch to DRI/EAF production follows the common approach to decarbonization being taken by Europe’s flat steel producers – to replace BF-BOF capacities with EAFs and hydrogen-fuelled DRI modules.
Possible decoupling of iron and steelmaking in Europe
More than 50 million tonnes of new green steelmaking capacity – using just EAFs or EAFs and DRI – is expected to come online in Europe in 2025-2030.
Moving to THE DRI/EAF production route, however, raises concerns in the European market, however, due to energy-intensive nature of DRIs and the lack of energy infrastructure in Europe to support such a transition.
Europe needs to build out its production of fossil-free electricity to produce green hydrogen to feed future DRI capacities. But the volumes needed for large-scale electrolysis to produce green hydrogen are significant – requiring an additional 400 terawatt hours (TWh) of CO2-free electricity in 2050 – and about seven times the amount of energy purchased by the sector currently, according to estimates from the European steel association, Eurofer.
From 2025 to 2030 renewable electrolyser capacity within the EU is expected to rise to 40 GW, producing up to 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen, according to the European Commission.
Using hydrogen with existing DRI modules in Europe is currently too expensive to be competitive, Fastmarkets understands, with hydrogen prices currently seen at around €5-8 per kg. The price of hydrogen needs to be “around €2.5-3.0 per kg to make it commercially viable for steelmaking,” a steel producer in Northern Europe told Fastmarkets.
Around 140,000-150,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year would be required to fuel one 2 million tpy DRI module, sources said.
Some market participants have said that it would, therefore, make sense to split iron and steelmaking in Europe and to import hot-briquetted iron (HBI) and DRI from abroad, such as the Middle East-North Africa region, where HBI/DRI production is more commercially viable.
“Shifting energy-intensive iron production to a resource-rich region would allow Europe to produce green steel with imported HBI/DRI,” an energy producer in Europe said.
Europe is already importing significant tonnages of HBI, with import volumes in 2023 reaching 2.61 million tonnes, according to Global Trade Tracker (GTT).
