Founded in 1906 by Giorgio Enrico Falck, Acciaierie e Ferriere Lombarde Falck was once the largest private steelmaking company in Italy. Its core activities were concentrated in Sesto San Giovanni, a manufacturing town at the gates of Milan. Steel production was there organized on four interconnected sites covering in total 1.8 km²: Unione (Martin-Siemens steelworks, later EAF steelworks), Concordia (EAF steelworks, hot rolling), Vittoria (cold rorolling, drawing) and Vulcano (ferroalloys). The energy required to run the huge electro-steelmaking complex was ensured, in the 1960s, by fifteen owned hydropower stations located in Valtellina, in the Lombardian Alps. Severely hit by the global steel crisis of mid-1970s, the Sesto plants underwent a deep restructuring leading to a progressive downsizing. In the meantime, the Falck group successfully shifted its core business from steelmaking to energy production and environmental engineering, through the creation of Sondel (now Falck Renewables). In 1996 the old Sesto steelworks were shut down definitively. After more than twenty years, the dismantling and reclamation of one of the major urban brownfields in Europe is almost completed. An ambitious regeneration project, based on a masterplan by Foster + Partners, will turn the site into an advanced pole for life sciences.