The first recorded industrial development at the site was a small carbide factory in the 1890s. Carbide production expanded in the 1900s and 1910s and, with the addition of a cyanamide plant, it became one of the first manufacturing plants in Europe for the artificial fertilizer urea. 

In the 1920s, the plant was one of the largest sites in the world producing calcium carbide and cyanamide.

In response to the world economic crisis, the production decreased and the plant was then closed for several years in the 1930s. By the beginning of World War II, the site was re-opened as TEF - ferrous alloy production factory, processing manganese ore into ferromanganese, silicomanganese, silica gel, silicocalcium and ferromolybdenum. In the years following the end of the war, the plant was modernized to increase capacity and graphite electrode production was introduced at the site to respond to the requirements of the metal industry (steel, aluminium and other related industries). Production of carbon electrodes and ferroalloys for the steel and aluminium industries became increasingly important from the 1960s.

During the 1980s, there was growing public pressure to adopt stricter environmental measures, especially with regard to air pollution control, which adversely affected the factory. The TEF factory ceased production in 1994, and in 1999 the factory's buildings were demolished and removed.