EKO Stahl is a steelworks in Eisenhüttenstadt, Brandenburg, Germany. It was established by the East German government in the early 1950s on a greenfield site, initially producing only pig iron. The name was changed in 1961 from Eisenhuttenkombinat 'J.W. Stalin' to Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost (EKO).
Cold rolling facilities were added in 1974, and basic oxygen steelmaking in 1984. After German reunification in 1990 the state-owned plant was privatised, and Belgian firm Cockerill-Sambre acquired it in stages from 1994 to 1998. Hot rolling facilities were added in the 1990s. Through mergers and takeovers, the owning comping since 2006 has been ArcelorMittal, and as of 2016 the plant is known as ArcelorMittal Eisenhüttenstadt.
History
In 1950 at the third party conference of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany the construction of a new steelworks was announced. A flat, agriculturally unimportant site near Fürstenberg, Eisenhüttenstadt was chosen, and on 18 August 1950 minister Fritz Selbmann symbolically felled a mountain pine tree, indicating the start of the work on construction of the new plant, named Eisenhuttenkombinat 'J.W. Stalin'. Part of the rationale for the plant was to compensate for an embargo on steel from western Germany, where most of primary production had historically been located – raw materials (iron ore and coal) were to be supplied from Ukraine and