Chairwoman & Chief Executive Officer, ERAMET
Christel Bories (Eramet) : Eramet repasse dans le vert après de lourdes pertes en 2020
Ce vendredi 25 février, Christel Bories, PDG d’Eramet, s'est penché sur le bilan d'Eramet après une période difficile en 2020dans l'émission Good Morning Business présentée par Sandra Gandoin et Christophe Jakubyszyn. Good Morning Business est à voir ou écouter du lundi au vendredi sur BFM Business. 👋 Bienvenue sur la chaîne YouTube officielle de BFM Business, première chaîne d'information économique et financière de France.
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About Christel Bories
In a July 2024 interview, Christel Bories stated that Eramet has "an important role to play in metal sovereignty" for the energy transition in Europe. She described the company's recent strategic refocusing on mining and first-stage metallurgy, centered on metals that support global economic development and the energy transition, such as manganese, nickel, and lithium for batteries. Bories noted that Eramet is opening a lithium mine in Argentina, extracting brine and converting it into battery-grade lithium carbonate on-site, and is also seeking exploration permits in Chile. Bories also addressed community relations, stating that the company requires "free, prior and informed consent" from local populations before starting any activity. She explained that Eramet begins with impact studies and discussions with communities, and will not proceed without their consent.
Transcript (16 segments)
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Interviewer0:02
Good morning business at 7:45 with Christel Bories, CEO of Eramet, who comes with results that are better than encouraging. Very good results, excellent. But it's true that you came out of the red and you posted a net income of 300 million euros compared to 675 million in losses last year, with revenue of 7 billion euros. What is that due to? Are you being carried by the rise in commodity prices or is it also internal efforts?
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Christel Bories0:39
Obviously the economic context was very good, it was very bad in 2020, and when you compare 2021 to 2019, the group's EBITDA increased by more than 60% and that is solely due to internal progress, so it's not due to commodity prices which fell and then recovered. It's due to our progress. So there is indeed a turning point and quite significant operational results for the group.
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Interviewer1:09
With the backdrop of the crisis, beyond the crisis, the war in Ukraine, how do you approach after such difficult years, how do you approach this business, this question and its constraints to come? The constraints of conflict, management, and the weight it will have.
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Christel Bories1:25
So we have a more general problem in Europe, which is our very strong dependence on a certain number of critical raw materials, especially on critical metals for the energy transition but also other metals like aluminum. Europe imports between 75% and 100% of the metals it consumes. So clearly we, Eramet, have a role to play, and potentially other European companies, to supply Europe with critical metals. The successive crises – the COVID crisis, the Ukrainian crisis, but also the rise of the energy transition with batteries – make this dependence even more acute. We must take measures to ensure Europe's sovereignty in this area.
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Interviewer2:22
Can Eramet play this role? The role of the major European group specialized in raw materials from ores? You are known for nickel. Will you start extracting lithium tomorrow, notably in France? Can we talk about that? Could you be this major sovereign actor in supplying Europe with rare metals and critical metals?
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Christel Bories2:42
We clearly have the ambition to be a very important player in supplying Europe with these metals for the energy transition. I recall that we have a portfolio that is perfectly positioned to meet this demand. We have nickel, we have cobalt, we have lithium, and we have manganese – everything needed to make a battery. So we are particularly well positioned. That said, Europe's needs will be enormous, and Eramet's projects, even if funded, will only meet perhaps 15-20% of Europe's needs. So that won't be enough, and we will need to find other ways to secure these supplies. I think that notably there have been recommendations made recently by the report on the creation of a fund allowing France to invest abroad to secure these raw materials. I think that is an extremely important measure.
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Interviewer3:40
Do you have enough financial means? Let's speak frankly, we know each other. We know that sometimes with your shareholders you are a bit constrained. Because there is no time to hesitate, you have to move forward, invest, launch mines, buy them, exploit them, secure Europe. Have politicians become aware of this? And do you still feel that they are clipping your wings and that you don't have the means for your ambition?
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Christel Bories4:04
I think there is real political awareness. We were talking about Europe's dependence on these metals. And the fact that Eramet can be a real vector for securing supplies for France and Europe. So if there were more money, what would you do with it? Yes, I always have many more ideas than money. I think that's the nature of having more ideas than money, and we have to be a bit selective at times. But indeed, our good results this year – and you mentioned net income, but also cash flow – we have been very cash generative, we have reduced our debt, so that positions us much more solidly for the future and allows us to accelerate our projects. We restarted our lithium project in Argentina at the beginning of the year. It will position us as the biggest project of a European company in terms of lithium supply in the world.
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Interviewer5:01
The popular belief that we extract lithium in France, is it possible?
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Christel Bories5:08
Yes, it's possible. There is lithium in geothermal brines, notably in the Alsace plain. But the wells are much smaller and the concentration is much lower than what can be found in the lithium triangle in Latin America. So yes, we are working on it, and our process applies perfectly to geothermal brines. But we must not dream; it will only cover a very small part of the demand.
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Interviewer5:40
So there are projects and perhaps an acceleration of these projects in the transition. There is also the project in Indonesia for batteries, and possibly a battery recycling project in France.
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Christel Bories5:49
Absolutely. First, the Indonesian project is key. We are in partnership with BASF: 51% Eramet, 49% BASF. The idea is to build a large plant based on our mine. We have a mine in Indonesia that is ramping up production significantly and has ore perfectly suited to make nickel and cobalt salts for batteries. So we are accelerating this project with BASF, and decisions will be made in the coming months. And then we have recycling in France, and we are also accelerating that. We will build a pilot plant this year, and that is a very important point because even if end-of-life batteries arrive late, battery manufacturing generates a lot of fresh scrap that will need to be recycled. We must not let Europe miss this secondary source of raw materials by letting its used batteries be exported outside Europe.
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Interviewer6:47
You also sold your historic plants Aubert & Duval, which produce high-performance steels. And you sold them to Safran, your customer and buyer, and its CEO Olivier Andriès will be on this set in half an hour. Why did you sell these plants? Not because it was no longer in the core business of Eramet?
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Christel Bories7:00
Eramet was no longer the right shareholder for Aubert & Duval. The aeronautics sector needs strong players to develop the materials of the future. Aubert & Duval has all these skills; it's truly a strategic player in the sector, but it's a medium-sized company. It will now be backed by major players in the aeronautics sector who will bring it financial means and skills. For them, it was the best shareholder. That's why we took the time to attach Aubert & Duval to the right shareholder for them. And it's also very good news for Eramet because it allows us to refocus and dedicate our resources to developing the energy transition.
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Interviewer7:44
Christel Bories is a great boss. You will agree to answer our question: one measure to make France successful. BFM Business: one measure to make France successful.
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Christel Bories7:57
What is this measure? I talked about it earlier: it's to implement concretely and quickly the measures to secure critical supplies for France. We saw with the COVID crisis, we see with the Ukrainian crisis, we will see with all this dependence on semiconductors, battery metals. There are a whole series of measures that have been recommended in various reports, like the recent Varin report, that are measures to secure our supplies and be much less dependent and sovereign on a number of critical sectors. We were talking about materials for the energy transition, but it could be strategic stocks, titanium for aeronautics, direct investments via a fund abroad in mines, reindustrialization by bringing back to France a number of our critical manufacturing. There are very concrete measures to take and very quickly. Eramet is ready to play its part if given the means. Christel Bories, Chairwoman and CEO of Eramet, thank you.