Destroyed in 2004, the Terken brewery was a huge industrial complex of more than four hectares. Located in the Union area in Roubaix, near Lille, the factory was, at one time, a symbol of "close symbiosis" between the company and its community...
Victim of the globalization of markets, the history of Stelfil Ltd. has suddenly stopped on March 28, 2008 for the factory and its hundred employees. The company has been decorated in 2002 in the Great manufacturing company category by the Mouvement québécois de la qualité and its future looked very promising after several years of unprofitability. But, on November 3, 2005, the worldwide leader, Mittal Steel (now ArcelorMittal) announced its acquisition. Then, three years later, the factory is closed. Official reason: consolidate another Mittal plant, located on the Saint-Patrick street, few kilometers from there.
What was manufactured at the Stelfil? The name says so. Wires of high and low carbon content, armature wires, closing wires, strand wires, etc.. In short, they were produced 84 000 tons per year. 24 hours per day, seven days a week. In 2002, at the time of being rewarded, 251 employees and 32 managers was working there.
Founded in 1872, the Dominion (Stelfil Ltd.) became the Dominion Wire Manufacturing Company in 1883 when it have been moved to the current location. More than a hundred years of history reduced to a vast empty warehouse in a few years.
Today, it doesn't remains a lot of thing inside. Apart from a few tires, old barrels and other trash, the place is empty. The tour is not worth so much trouble. We toured pretty quickly. There are input via the nearby business that earns you a few little shivers (lots of signs saying that the place is under surveillance and a sheet in the window with the header of a company repeatedly cited during the Charbonneau commission for its links with organized crime), but that's all.
Destroyed in 2004, the Terken brewery was a huge industrial complex of more than four hectares. Located in the Union area in Roubaix, near Lille, the factory was, at one time, a symbol of "close symbiosis" between the company and its community...
For the region, it is a vestige of an industrial era that is now over. Whereas in the past, the factory gave a salary to nearly a hundred employees, the complex is now padlocked and deserted, although monitored by about twenty surveillance...
It can not be said that the place is in a good shape. The water infiltrates through every small hole in the roof to the point of offering on this cold winter night a skating rink on each floor. Moreover, the ice must make more than eight...
Although this building was built around 1861, the history of the Dow brewery began nearly 60 years earlier, in 1790, when a farmer named Thomas Dunn started in the beer industry in La Prairie, who was an important stopover for travelers who went...