Paul Wurth: from a Hollerich boilerworks to blast furnaces worldwide

Founded in 1870 as a boilermaking workshop on the edge of Luxembourg City, Paul Wurth grew into a supplier of ironmaking technology used across the globe, before joining the German SMS group.

A boilerworks in Hollerich

On 4 November 1870, the courts authorised a boilermaking facility founded by Eugène Muller in Luxembourg-Hollerich. Paul Wurth, a graduate of the École Centrale de Paris, joined it as an assembly engineer in 1889. Two years later, Muller sold him the business, which became Ateliers Paul Wurth and employed 25 people. In 1895, Wurth also bought Luxembourg's first registered automobile, a Benz. The firm specialised in metal structures, notably bridges and blast furnace shells. Its first bridge, completed in 1902 over the Dommeldange vicinal line, used Grey beams from Differdange, and the Schengen bridge followed in 1908 and 1909. In 1907, the workshop produced the first one-metre Grey beam. Its horizon already stretched well beyond the Grand Duchy: in 1909, Paul Wurth built an overhead travelling crane for a client in Hanyang, China.

SMS and Paul Wurth have been setting technological standards in the steel industry for 150 years.

From family firm to steel engineer

In 1920, the business became the Société Anonyme des Anciens Etablissements Paul Wurth, with ARBED, the Banque Internationale à Luxembourg and Paul Wurth himself as shareholders. Six years later, aged 63, the founder sold his shares to ARBED and left the company. After the Second World War, licences from the British firm Ashmore, Benson, Pease & Co. allowed it to deliver complete blast furnaces, the first of them for S.A. Métallurgique d'Espérance-Longdoz in Seraing, Belgium. In 1969, its engineers invented the Bell Less Top, a charging system for blast furnaces that the company went on to license abroad, China included. The firm took the name Paul Wurth S.A. in 1977 and opened its first foreign subsidiary in Brazil during the 1970s.

A Luxembourg hub within SMS group

In 2012, the German engineering group SMS acquired 59.1% of Paul Wurth from ArcelorMittal and Luxempart, while the Luxembourg State retained the remaining shares, directly and through the SNCI and Spuerkeess. On 21 April 2021, SMS group took over that remaining stake and became sole owner. Today, Paul Wurth counts about 500 employees in Luxembourg, and according to SMS group, its technology equips almost all modern blast furnaces worldwide. The company celebrated its 150th anniversary on 4 November 2020, although the pandemic forced it to postpone the celebrations. Two-thirds of its staff now work outside the Grand Duchy, a reach that began with a single crane shipped to China more than a century ago.

This article was written by artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editors.