Everyone in Luxembourg knew Arbed. Who still knows ArcelorMittal?

Every once in a while, Valérie Massin, Country Head of ArcelorMittal, stands in a room to give a presentation on the steel company – its history, and what it actually offers and does today. Usually, people in the audience talk. Several of them, she recalls, had worked at Arbed decades earlier. Just like her, who started out at Arbed as a lawyer in 2000, a mere couple of years before its fusion with Spanish Aceralia and French Usinor. "They would say, 'Ah, yes, the Luxembourgish steel industry, we know it, we've been there.' I realised that they are no longer aware of the reality and scale of what is behind ArcelorMittal, " Massin regrets. The reasons for that disconnect are plenty. "The group has transformed profoundly, and people are perhaps no longer aware of what we really are, " she reflects. "Luxembourg itself has transformed a lot: The Luxembourgish population in Luxembourg [represents a slight majority], compared to the era when, in every family in Luxembourg, someone was working for Arbed. That historical connection is less present today."

Steelmaking is often dismissed as an "old industry", yet most of the steel produced today did not exist 20 years ago. "We also need to make ourselves known, that's clear. We cannot just rely on a name because behind it, we have to show what making steel really means."

Luxembourg's industrial past is usually considered with a kind of awe, almost nostalgia, despite the physical toll it took on its workers – to a point where people like former Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker frequently remember in interviews that life in the Minett basin once followed the rhythm of the steel works. At its peak, the industry kept up to 25.000 people employed. It was common and a point of pride to go work for Arbed straight after graduation. Arbed was the local monopoly (despite being far from the biggest steel producer in a global sense, making it only to spot 21 in 1974, according to data from World Steel Organisation); the 3.570 people currently employed by ArcelorMittal in Luxembourg are a far cry from that era.

The steel stayed, the jobs didn't

The "someone-in-every-family-worked-at-Arbed" link that once tethered the country to its steel industry has weakened. The business has globalised and risen to the top of the production charts by 2005 – now still being outdone only by one, the China Baowu Group – and the merger of Arcelor and Mittal 20 years ago allowed for increased diversification.