VEB MÖBELFABRIK [DE]

Exploration #287. The former VEB Möbelfabrik Colmnitz in Saxony began in the 19th century as a chair factory created from the Neumühle site. After decades of furniture production, nationalisation and conversion under the GDR, it closed in 1992.

The industrial story of this abandoned factory starts in 1885, when chair maker Carl Friedrich Hofmann bought the Neumühle property in Colmnitz. By 1896, Hofmann and Carl Albert Kittel had turned chair making into factory production, linking the village to Saxony’s furniture industry. The first chapter ended in 1937, when financial difficulties forced the business to stop. Two years later, Helmut Richter acquired the buildings and rapidly expanded furniture production through military contracts during the Nazi period.

After 1945, private ownership disappeared and the plant was nationalised as VEB Möbelfabrik Colmnitz. Under the GDR, the factory mainly produced kitchen furniture, cupboards and buffets. But the planned economy created overproduction, while a destructive storm in 1958 further weakened the business. Furniture production faded, and the site was absorbed into VEB Bodenbearbeitungsgeräte Leipzig.

Its final role was agricultural: the Colmnitz works made parts for the KS-6 self-propelled beet harvester and later spray booms for crop protection. After German reunification, the factory could not survive the market transition. The last machines were dismantled on 31 March 1992, leaving empty halls and a surviving office wing.

KAARSENFABRIEK [BE]

Exploration #280. Kaarsenfabriek. This candle factory, known online as Kaarsenfabriek, began in 1902 in Belgium. Converted from a 19th-century gin distillery, it produced stearin candles, devotional candles and floor wax until its closure in 1983.

The former Kaarsenfabriek is not a monumental industrial complex, but a compact factory rooted in local Belgian production. In 1902, the Verougstraete family transformed an older distillery into a candle works under the Union brand, supplying both domestic use and religious demand with household candles, church candles and votive products. Its growth followed the needs of the early 20th century. Around 1925, a new brick building was added behind the main site, giving the factory more space for production. By the 1930s, Union candles had become well known locally, enough for the company to present its products in a striking Art Deco display cabinet at the 1935 Brussels World Exhibition.

After the Second World War, production moved away from manual casting. A wheel-casting system allowed candles to be made in a more efficient line, marking the factory’s shift from craft-based work to small-scale mechanized industry. The decline came with the same pressures that affected many family-run Belgian manufacturers: automation elsewhere, cheaper imports and a changing market.

The factory closed in 1983. Today, its dark rooms, brick halls and surviving industrial traces preserve the memory of a modest but complete candle-making world.

CARTIERA VI-MA [IT]

Exploration #285. The VI-MA paper mill in Cairate was born in the post-war boom as a separate production pole linked to the Vita-Mayer group. Built south of the older mill, it served the rising market for disposable paper before the crisis and closure of 1977.

In the industrial landscape of the Olona Valley, the Cartiera VI-MA of Cairate represents one of the clearest signs of Italy’s economic expansion after the Second World War. It must not be confused with the historic Vita-Mayer paper mill, whose roots go back to the nineteenth century. VI-MA came later, when Astorre Mayer redirected production toward mass consumption and disposable paper goods. The new plant answered a practical need: the original factory, compressed between Cairate and Lonate Ceppino, had almost exhausted its available space.

Around the 1950s and 1960s, demand was growing fast, and the wider Vita-Mayer system reached its peak, with thousands of workers, heavy freight traffic and an annual output reported at 80,000 tons of paper. VI-MA was therefore more than an annex. It was the modern face of the company’s final expansion: reinforced-concrete buildings, large industrial volumes and a layout designed for scale. Its story follows the same curve as many Italian paper industries: growth, technological ambition, then sudden decline.

From 1971 the sector was hit by international competition, shortages of timber and wider social and political instability. Floods of the Olona added further damage. In 1977 the group collapsed, leaving VI-MA silent together with the rest of the Cairate paper-making district. Today the former VI-MA paper mill is part of a vast industrial archaeology area between Cairate and Lonate Ceppino. Its abandoned structures preserve the memory of a working valley shaped by water, railways, paper and the fragile optimism of the post-war industrial age.

(main source: https://www.cartieracairate.it/la-storia/).

URANIUM MINE OFFICE [BG]

Exploration #281. This article shows the former headquarters of a state company that managed uranium mining across Bulgaria from 1945 to 1992. The abandoned offices, built in the 1960s, once coordinated a strategic industry central to Cold War geopolitics, before being deserted after the sector’s collapse.

Following the discovery of uranium deposits near Sofia before World War II, mining activity expanded rapidly under Soviet influence. After the war, a joint Soviet-Bulgarian mining structure was established, supported by hundreds of Soviet engineers. Uranium extracted from local mines was transported to the USSR and became a key resource for early nuclear research, including reactors and possibly atomic weapons. The headquarters later became part of the “Redki Metali” (Rare Metals) organization, which employed around 13,000 workers at its peak and oversaw uranium extraction nationwide. Mining operations were intensive and continuous, often carried out manually and under hazardous conditions, with little protection for workers exposed to radiation.

The industry declined after the fall of communism. In 1991, the centralized system fragmented into smaller entities, and by 1992 the Bulgarian government officially ended uranium mining. Administrative buildings, including this headquarters, were abandoned as the entire sector shut down. Beyond its industrial role, the site is tied to long-term environmental consequences. Decades of extraction and processing contaminated soil and water, with restrictions on agriculture already imposed in the 1980s. Even after closure and rehabilitation efforts, radioactive dust and pollution remain persistent issues in the surrounding region.

MINA CHUKUROVO [BG]

Exploration #278. Mina Chukurovo. First worked in 1856, Mina Chukurovo near Gabra (Sofia Province) became Bulgaria’s oldest coal mine, later privatized in 2002; operations stopped in 2015 and the concession was terminated in 2020.

Located in western Bulgaria, the Chukurovo open-pit mine extracted lignite, a fast-burning coal historically used for power generation and industrial heat. Its modern phase was reshaped after privatization in 2002, when the state granted a 20-year concession—a formal attempt to keep the deposit productive in the post-socialist economy. Beneath the abandoned workings lies a much older story written in geology: the Chukurovo lignite basin belongs to the Sofia coal province and its coal-bearing sediments date to the Helvetian (Middle Miocene), formed by ancient swamp environments later compressed into low-rank coal.

The site’s decline is documented with unusual clarity: in late 2014 procedures began to suspend operations, and in early 2015 major layoffs marked the effective end of mining activity. With extraction halted, Mina Chukurovo shifted from workplace to industrial relic—an austere landscape of cut slopes and infrastructure that now preserves, in place, one of Bulgaria’s longest-running chapters of lignite history.

ZECHE FARMER [DE]

Exploration #275 Zeche Farmer. Zeche Farmer is a former coal mine shaft located in the Saarland region of Germany. Like many other mining sites in this area, it was shut down following the steady decline in coal demand, which made extraction economically unsustainable. After its closure, the site was gradually abandoned and left without protection.

Over time, it suffered from looting and the destruction of its machinery, a fate shared by many industrial structures that lose their original function. The absence of conservation measures accelerated its physical decay, erasing much of the technical heritage that once defined the site.

Today, Zeche Farmer survives in a marginal and improvised form: parts of the former mining complex are used as storage space by local farmers. While this new use has little to do with its industrial past, it represents a pragmatic form of reuse and highlights the complex afterlife of industrial landscapes in post-mining regions..

CENTRALE TERMICA UNIONE MANIFATTURE [IT]

Exploration #276 Centrale termica unione manifatture. These photos capture the abandoned thermal power plant of one of the Unione Manifatture factories, a major textile group that operated in the Milan province during the first half of the last century. Once the beating heart that powered looms and production lines, this industrial relic is now all that remains of a much larger complex. While nearly all the other facilities have been demolished or repurposed over time, this power plant has somehow survived, standing alone as a silent witness to an era of industrial ambition, labor, and transformation that shaped the local landscape.

CENTRALE IDROELETTRICA DELL’ARDO [IT]

Exploration #270 Centrale idroelettrica dell’Ardo. The idea of bringing electric lighting to Belluno dates back to 1890, when the opportunity to replace oil lamps was considered. Initially, it was thought to exploit the Ardo torrent, but its inconstant flow forced the search for alternatives. Thus, in 1897, the first power station was built on the Caorame stream, 25 km from the city, guaranteeing the lighting of 260 incandescent lamps.

The increasing demand for energy soon made a new plant necessary. In 1907, the Società Bellunese Industria Elettrica started the construction of the Ardo power station, which went into operation in 1910 with two Francis turbines, manufactured by the Riva company of Milan. The facility, with a capacity of almost 500 kW, supplied energy for public lighting and local industries.

After passing under the control of SADE and then ENEL, the power station operated until 1966, when a flood of the torrent severely damaged the hydraulic works. In 1968, ENEL decided not to renew the concession, judging the restoration to be unsustainable. Since then, the building has been left to decay, a victim of theft, vandalism and, finally, the collapse of the roof, which has made any hypothesis of recovery impossible.
Today, the Ardo power station is reduced to a ruin: without a roof, the interior is invaded by vegetation and the structure continues to deteriorate..

VISMARA SALUMI [IT]

In progress…

Exploration #262 Vismara salumi. This industry was founded in 1898 and distinguished itself as one of the oldest brands of Italian charcuterie. It grew in the period between the two world wars and in the 1950s began exporting its products internationally. In the 1960s, it also made a name for itself with television advertisements, introducing innovations such as the slicing trays in the 1970s.

In the early 2000s, it closed its historic factory in the centre of town to open a new, more modern factory nearby. Since then, the buildings have been in a state of disrepair. In 2026 demolitions works have started.

HFB [BE]

Gallery in progress…

Exploration #261 HFB. Hauts-Forneaux B (HFB), located in Seraing near Liège, is a striking symbol of the region’s rich industrial heritage. This blast furnace, part of the larger Cockerill-Sambre steelworks, played a pivotal role in the development of the steel industry in Wallonia, a region historically known as one of Europe’s industrial powerhouses.

Built in 1959, HFB was a cornerstone of the steelmaking process in Liège for decades. Its towering structure and intricate network of pipes, chimneys, and conveyor systems epitomized the industrial ambition of the mid-20th century. The furnace was designed to smelt iron ore into molten iron, which was then used to produce steel. During its peak, the furnace operated continuously, producing hundreds of thousands of tons of iron annually. It provided employment for thousands of workers, fostering economic growth and transforming Seraing into a thriving industrial hub. However, by the late 20th century, global economic changes and competition from other steel-producing regions led to a decline in the European steel industry. HFB was initially shut down in 2009, but operations briefly resumed from April 2009 until April 2010. Despite this short-lived revival, the site was ultimately closed permanently in 2011, marking the definitive end of its industrial activity.

Following its closure, HFB gained a second life as a beloved destination for urban explorers from around the world. The site became an emblem of urban exploration, showcasing the haunting beauty of forgotten spaces while preserving a piece of Wallonia’s industrial identity.

Starting from 2023, most of the HFB site was demolished, marking a significant shift in its story. However, the iconic blast furnace itself and the adjacent boiler house were preserved, reflecting their historical and cultural importance. These remaining structures stand as monuments to Liège’s industrial past, bridging the gap between the region’s legacy and its future. While much of the site is now gone, these preserved landmarks ensure that the memory of HFB endures, continuing to inspire those who cherish its history.