The development of electric batteries entails, in Europe, a risk of bottleneck with the shortage of imported metals: cobalt, nickel, lithium, manganese. For class 1 nickel, that of electric batteries, there is indeed Caledonian production but it is intended for the United States.
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The French observatory of mineral resources for industrial sectors (Ofremi), was officially launched on Tuesday in Paris with the mission of pooling skills and data on supply chains of critical metals, and anticipating the needs of tomorrow. .
“The observatory is not intended to carry out geological research or to work on new mining projects” but to carry out “strategic and technical-economic monitoring”, says Christophe Poinssot, Deputy Director General of the Geological and Mining Research Bureau (BRGM), spearhead of the new observatory.
Launch of OFREMI in Paris. In the presence of Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Energy Transition, Roland Lescure, Minister Delegate for Industry, Christel Bories, President of the ERAMET group.
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Cobalt, nickel, rare earths… France, and more broadly Europe, produce almost no critical metals, except recently in Finland, and have to import almost everything while the needs are exploding and the tensions on the metals reviews are just beginning.
Taking the example of lithium, necessary for electric car batteries, Mr. Poinssot explains that the observatory will seek to “know where the resources are, the refining capacities, the projects that the major mining players have in mind” and “what which will emerge at the end of 5 or 10 years”.
“There is a feeling that there is no longer a need for metals or mining or heavy industry, which is wrong. These activities are carried out abroad and we are closely dependent on them”, the idea also being to “relocate part of it” to the territory, according to Mr. Poinssot.
In addition, a third of European imports of nickel and aluminum as well as a quarter of copper imports come from Russia.
There is battery-grade nickel (class 1) produced in New Caledonia, but the intermediate production of Prony Resources is mainly intended for the American car manufacturer Tesla.
As for the “poor ores” delivered by SLN to metallurgist Queensland Pacific Metals (QPM), they will be processed in Australia and then sold to General Motors for its electric vehicle factory in Detroit, Michigan. European automakers did not come forward.
The new observatory, co-financed by the public authorities and the private sector, brings together the group of French aeronautical and space industries (Gifas), the automotive platform (PFA) and the Alliance of mines, minerals and metals.
The goal, he says, is “to provide industrial sectors and public authorities with several tools”.
The first is to map the global supply, the second to assess the extent of the needs and the third to analyze the “Risks of disruption of supply of political, climatic, environmental origins”explains Mr. Poinssot.
It will allow France to better understand and enhance its own subsoil when our country has, in mainland France and overseas, certain critical metals: lithium in the granite of Beauvoir in the Allier and in water geothermal energy in Alsace, nickel and cobalt in New Caledonia, etc.
The partners also include the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (CNAM), the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the French Petroleum Institute (IFPEN), the Agency for the Environment and the Control of energy (Ademe) and IFRI (French Institute for International Relations), for the geopolitical dimension.
The observatory also aims for a European dimension. “Everyone is waking up to the subject”, observes Mr. Poinssot who specifies that Ofremi is already “building an alliance with his German counterpart”the DERAs.
For their part, the French mining group Eramet and the German chemical giant BASF might soon reach an agreement in the Sonic Bay project. It would be to produce “electric nickel” north of Maluku in Indonesia. Thinking of European battery factories?
