1872: The Société Métallurgique de Haute Moselle was founded on 1 March 1872 by 18 Directors, mostly from the city of Nancy (property owners, industrialists, engineers, philosopher), including Victor de Lespinats, civil engineer of the Mines de Paris, with the aim of building and operating blast furnaces on a 5.5 ha field that they purchased from Neuves-Maisons, as well as searching for and operating a mining deposit. After the war of 1870, France lost the iron basin of the Lorraine and almost all its steel factories, and therefore needed to invest in new sites. The choice of the site is linked to the presence of the Nancy-Dijon railway, which connects the plant to the Eastern railway network and to the Southern Branch project of the Eastern Canal. The goal is to build a smelting plant that would use the abundant iron ore found under the Haye Plateau located nearby.

To this end, the Company acquired land at the intersection of the Nancy-Dijon railway line and the route planned for the Eastern Canal (a project at the time). The Valley’s Steel Vocation.

1922-1939: Investments resume after the war: Coke ovens, gas blower, wire rolling mill in 1922... but stop once again when the Second World War breaks out.

1947: New coke ovens, a more powerful thermal power plant (250000 KW), a continuous billet mill and a continuous wire mill.

1955: The factories at Neuves-Maisons, the lime kilns at Vaucouleurs and the drawing mill at Sainte Colombe and Vierzon take the place of the Compagnie des Forges de Chatillon-Commentry and Neuves-Maisons, under the name Société des Aciéries et Tréfilerie de Neuves-Maisons Chatillon. The first continuous two-line wire mill is built to manufacture 330 to 440 kg coils or straight bars.

1979: OBM Steel Mill

1981: Merger with Usinor (nationalization of the steel industry: Usinor-Sacilor): reorganization of the long products Division business. New O.B.M.-type conversion mill built with two 125-ton converters.

1981: New continuous casting, ingot casting is stopped.

The SAM plant located at Neuves-Maisons produces continuous casting billets and then develops weldable concrete reinforcing steels in stretched coils, smooth machine wire, crenellated reinforcing coils for stretching weldable concrete reinforcements.

The following equipment in the steel mill makes this possible:

• electric furnace with a capacity of 150 tons
• pocket furnace for refining the steel
• continuous 6-line casting mill

The rolling mill on the site also has the following equipment:

• 180 t/hour billet reheating furnace
• wire mill, 2 lines
• cold rolling lines (2) and stretching lines (3)