The group more than doubled its net profit in 2022, to 740 million euros, a "first" made possible by a "buoyant economic context in the 1st half" and a surge in raw materials, the company announced on Wednesday.
After complicated years, the group has achieved "historic results", in the words of CEO Christel Bories, during a press briefing with some journalists.
“Our strategic repositioning completed, the year 2023 marks the entry into a new era for Eramet,” she said.
The metallurgist specializing in special steels for defense and aeronautics Aubert et Duval, sold to Airbus, "should leave the scope of the group at the end of March", after obtaining the green lights from the competition authorities concerned.
"The process has been delayed" to get the green light in China, "but the operation should be completed in the coming days", assured Ms. Bories.
The group also received on Tuesday a takeover proposal from the Syntagma Capital fund for the steel specialist Erasteel, which the group had also put up for sale, said the CEO.
"We can now rely on a very solid base of growth-generating mining assets", she commented, recalling that Eramet operated "the largest nickel mine in the world", in Weda Bay in Indonesia, since 2019, as well as "the largest manganese mine in the world", located in Gabon.
Last year, Eramet achieved a turnover of 5 billion euros, up 37% compared to that of 2021, and an operating profit also historically high of 1.5 billion euros.
"The year 2023 will be a year of accelerated growth on investment projects", particularly on energy transition metals such as lithium and nickel, added Ms. Bories.
In total, the group should make "nearly 600 million euros of investment in 2023".
The lithium mine project in Argentina, carried out with a Chinese partner, Tsingshan, mothballed during the health crisis, "should start production in the first quarter of 2024", said the CEO, targeting 24,000 tonnes of production per year in a first time.
The group then plans a "rapid tripling of the annual production capacity" of the site, whose reserves are estimated at 10 million tonnes of lithium.
Geothermal lithium
This investment, 50% financed by each of the two partners, amounts to some 700 million euros in total for the first phase.
"For the second phase, the envelope will be significant, but will not be double what we will have invested in the first phase," said the group's financial director, Nicolas Carré.
The geothermal lithium exploitation project in Alsace should see the light of day "by the end of the decade", according to Ms. Bories.
The group is also counting on an investment decision "by the end of the year" for its battery-grade nickel-cobalt production project with Germany's BASF in Indonesia.
"We prefer to wait until we have advanced a little further in the engineering studies before making the final investment decision," said Ms. Bories, "but there is no questioning of the project, a key player metals for batteries".
A question mark nevertheless hangs over the continuation of nickel mining activities in New Caledonia.
The group recently announced an emergency plan, in conjunction with the French State, to preserve short-term cash and avoid a bankruptcy filing for its subsidiary SLN (Société le Nickel).
Aerial view of the Société Le Nickel factory, a subsidiary of Eramet, in Noumea, New Caledonia, May 10, 2012 © FRED PAYET / AFP/Archives
"This solution is a short-term solution that does not solve the long-term problems of the problem of power supply and access to our mineral deposits," said Ms. Bories.
"It is important that New Caledonia and the French State look into the future of nickel in New Caledonia", she underlined, saying that she was "open to all solutions providing a solution to long term".
© 2023 AFP