Nine months after the dismissal of the 220 employees, the Silicon producer site is sold to Swiss Steel Group, parent company of Ugitech, who wants to make it a steel in circular economy.
by Aline Leclerc
Two years after the announcement of stopping the Ferropem silicon factory from Château-Feuillet to La Léchère (Savoie), and nine months after the economic dismissal of the 220 employees of the site, ferroglobe, the Owner, and Swiss Steel Group, parent company of Ugitech, announced jointly the world, Tuesday January 10, having signed an agreement on the sale of the site.
Would it be the epilogue of this industrial soap opera which punctuated the last presidential campaign? Denouncing a strategic restructuring without economic foundation, the employees, very mobilized, had then drawn the attention of candidates by demonstrating how absurd it was to let the first silicon production site in France, at the time of the big speeches on the Sovereignty.
This element is indeed strategic in the composition of certain aluminums, silicones and photovoltaic panels. Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise) and Yannick Jadot (Europe Ecologie-les Verts) had then asked for a temporary nationalization. And Agnès Pannier-Runacher, then Minister Delegate in charge of Industry, tried until the end to bring back to her decision. In vain. Employees were dismissed on the 1 er April 2022.
After months of uncertainty about the possibility of finding a buyer, this extraordinary site – 10.5 hectares, 38,000 square meters of buildings, four industrial ovens and a direct rail service – will finally be bought by its neighbor , the Sagitech Steelist, the first employer in the department, installed about thirty kilometers.
“It is a file that the State has never abandoned”
He found the qualities he was looking for to implant his new Ugi’Ring project, which aims to become the first steelworks in the circular economy in the world. Unrelated to the production of silicon, which must be partly transferred to the Isérois site of Ferropem.
The innovative idea, which, in 2021, received 9.4 million euros in subsidies from France revived for research and development, is to manage to recycle ferroalliages to reuse them in the industry. Recover the manganese of used alkaline and saline batteries, nickel or chrome on co -produces today put in recycling center. What create in France a sector of these metals that have become essential in the manufacture of batteries or smartphones, and so far imported from the end of the world. A relocation of a new kind, also supported by the Rhône-Alpes region, up to 1 million euros.
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