Global and environmental issues – with the imperative of a European “green deal” aimed at reoxygenating our planet -, are combined with geopolitical and geostrategic issues. Preserving our freedoms, our lifestyles and our jobs requires us to open our eyes to several emergencies:

• Mastery of our essential industrial chains

• Controlling our supply chains.

It is not only about preserve the tools linked to our defense industries (land-air-sea) but also to our essential industries (energy – health – food) and generating jobs and innovation (automobile-construction-…).

In this regard, Our industries, upstream of each of the previous ones, are an essential asset because many ores, minerals and metals are needed in our everyday products.

We have thus gone from 10 metals (e.g. in a landline telephone from 40 years ago) to more than 50 metals in a current smartphone.

The European JRC (Joint Research Committee) has demonstrated this as much as the IEA or the Catholic University of Louvain (KUL), to name but a few, in recent studies.

• link to the European Union's Raw Material Information System
• link to the text of the EU Critical Raw Materials Act
• link to the JRC study on critical materials 2023
• link to the JRC study on industrial chains and material demands 2023
• link to the IEA study on critical metals related to clean energy
• link to the study by the Catholic University of Louvain

France, with its wealth of leading players in the processing of primary and secondary raw materials, has some resources on its own soil or major sites abroad.  Given European geology, local veins are not always up to par with needs.

Notable exceptions to the primary materials of the energy transition include the potential for rock and geothermal lithium and copper discovered in France..

The transformation of these minerals is also important and the chains can be very long, as for example in the case of the battery: extraction, concentration, refining, pre-Active Cathode Materials, Active Cathode Materials, to finally be incorporable by battery gigafactories.

It is imperative that we regain sufficient autonomy for our metal supply lines and mitigate, or even eliminate, the risks from certain sources.

For telephone metals, we can cite the study by Prof. Mike Ashby, Cambridge University; Prof. Jean-Pierre Raskin, Université Catholique de Louvain:

For an illustration of the presence of metals in double transition tools: rare earths, copper, nickel, manganese, cobalt and many more... 

A3M is therefore fully involved in the European Critical Raw Material Act , to fully participate in the issues expressed:

• 2030 targets for strategic raw materials :
  • Intra-European extraction of at least 10% of consumption annual EU (when EU reserves allow)
  • Intra-European transformation of at least 40% of annual EU consumption
  • Production by recycling of at least 25% of annual EU consumption
  • Diversified imports of which a maximum of 65% the annual consumption of a metal comes from a single country of supply
• Development of recycling
• Diplomacy mining
• Strong CSR requirements of the IRMA or ICMM type for example
• Project labeling from Strategic Raw Materials

The issue of strategic stocks will have to be assessed in a pragmatic manner.

A3M participates in the work of OFREMI, dialogue with the Interministerial Delegate for Strategic Minerals and Metals Supplies (DIAMMS) and many other channels so that our manufacturers can fully participate in these ambitions.

The design and implementation of AAP Critical Metals, of the fund INFRAVIA and project financing by the C3IV, are all tools accompanying this direction.

For a concrete example: the case of copper.