Emmanuel Macron will lay the first stone of a shell powder factory in Bergerac (Dordogne) on Thursday, a new stage in the
“
war economy
”
that he is calling for to meet the needs of Ukraine and the new geopolitical situation.
The Head of State, expected at 10:30 a.m. at the Eurenco site, European leader in powders and explosives, will be accompanied by the Ministers of the Economy Bruno Le Maire and the Ministers of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu. He will also meet the leaders of the French arms industry on the subject of rearmament, the Élysée indicated without further details.
Emmanuel Macron urges defense manufacturers to accelerate the transition to
“war economy mode”
, that is to say to produce
“more and faster”
to continue to actively support Ukraine against Russia. In February, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also called for
“large-scale”
arms production
in Europe to supply Ukraine by breaking ground on a Rheinmetall shell factory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Sunday that his country would lose the war if it did not receive more aid, as Russia increases its pressure in the east of the country.
"Numbness"
$60 billion in American aid promised by President Joe Biden has remained blocked in Congress for months. The Europeans, for their part, are striving to increase their production rates and find alternative resources with purchases of ammunition outside the EU.
During his greetings to the Armed Forces in January in Cherbourg (Manche), the Head of State castigated a
“form of satisfied numbness”
of the defense industry before the invasion of Ukraine.
“We cannot let Russia think that it can win (...) A Russian victory is the end of European security
,” he then insisted. France also intends to strengthen its sovereignty by bringing back production capacities that left abroad after the end of the Cold War.
Heir to the National Company of Powders and Explosives (SNPE), Eurenco is reintroducing on the national territory the production of powder essential for propelling shells. The Bergerac site, which had been producing it since 1915, was dismantled in 2007.
Caesar Cannons
The new production unit, which will enter service in the first quarter of 2025, will be able to produce up to 1,200 tonnes of powder per year. This production will make it possible to fill 500,000 modular charges - which are slipped into the cannon, behind the shell, to propel it - and which will begin to arrive in the first quarter of 2025 in Ukraine, said the Élysée.
Eurenco, created in 2004 and 100% owned by the French state, is a crucial link in the European munitions industry, supplying the French Nexter as well as the German Rheinmetall, the Polish PGZ and the Czech CSG.
Its order book is full until 2030. It notably manufactures the modular charges used to propel the shells in the Caesar cannons, the flagship of French artillery, delivered to Ukraine.
Responding to strong demand sparked by the war in Ukraine, the group, which has sites in France, Sweden, Belgium and the United States, will invest nearly 500 million euros between 2024 and 2026 to increase its production tenfold. large caliber powders.
It will also double its production capacity for modular charges in France, which will increase from 500,000 per year currently - thanks to the import of powders from Sweden - to 1.2 million in 2026.
For this, it benefited from an envelope of 76 million euros in European subsidies.