Several factors led to the establishment of the works, which were located in an area that was then part of Austria-Hungary: late 19th-century technological development that resulted in increased steel production through new techniques, spurred by the serious need of metal for the Austro-Hungarian Army; the aged and unprofitable methods used by the area's iron workshops; the building of a railroad; and the enlargement of the market due to increased metal consumption in Transylvania's mechanical plants.
[1] Iron ore was extracted from the mine near the Ghelari plant some 16 km away, and was brought there on a ropeway conveyor built at the same time as the first furnace.
The factory administration moved there, and the old iron, forging and machine workshops gradually lost their importance, although the Govăjdia Blast Furnace remained active as late as 1918.
A fourth furnace, 288 m3 in volume and 3.3 m higher than the others, started production in August 1895, reaching its planned capacity of 109 tons per day within a month.
[2] After 1920, they were now known as the Hunedoara Ironworks (Uzinele de Fier Hunedoara; UFH) and continued as a mining and steel-making center, with considerable holdings of raw materials and output capacity: iron ore mines at Ghelari, Arănieş and Vadu Dobrii; mining concessions at Lunca Cernii de Jos, Alun, Sălciua de Jos, Trascău, Runc and one near Odorheiu Secuiesc; five tall furnaces producing 119,000 tons a year; a workshop for moulding cast iron pieces with a 1500 ton-a-year capacity; a forge equipped with two steam hammers; a machine workshop for preparing 500–600 tons per year of moulded or forged pieces; a cinder block workshop putting out up to 1,200,000 bricks each year; a limestone quarry at Bunila; a number of coal depots manufacturing charcoal for the furnaces; a tall blast furnace at Govăjdia equipped with a cast iron mould and a Martin furnace; a 400-hp hydropower plant; a funicular network for carrying materials; a mill; and workshops for agricultural and other types of tools.
For instance, one plan from that year, by the head mine inspector of the Jiu Valley, called for high growth to be achieved both by using the plant to its fullest capacity; and by refining cast iron to a higher degree, first into steel and then into laminated products, by using upgraded equipment.
[1] Between 1937 and 1940, a modern steel production and rolling section was built, with machinery imported from Nazi Germany, covering 8500 m2 and fitted with four special components.
Second, the 5 ton-per-load electric furnace produced special steels for tools, including alloys of chromium and tungsten, up to 6000 tons a year.
The first, with a capacity of 150,000 tons per year, two 50-ton furnaces and two 20-ton ones for alloyed steels shaped into ingots, featured vacuum degasification and electro-slag remelting.
[1] The Communist regime fell in 1989, and the transition to a market economy found the works ill-equipped to survive, with their technology not having been upgraded since the late 1970s.
In mid-1999, steel plant #2 was gradually shut down: first sintering was halted, then coking and finally on June 12, 115 years to the day after the works were inaugurated, the cast iron-producing furnaces.
[14][15] The plant's administrative headquarters, which functioned as a school for workers prior to the Communist era, is considered a historic building, but once abandoned in the years after 1990, it entered a state of disrepair.
Its stairs, cables, floors and furniture were stolen and sold by local Roma, its interior, sheltering stray dogs, strewn with documents and remaining furniture wrecked by those searching for valuables within, the attic ravaged and housing bats, the basement covered with crates and hundreds of gas masks once used by Patriotic Guards to protect themselves from the pollution of the plant.