In Bergerac, the earthworks at the factory have been completed and the buildings will be built at the end of the year.
From 2025, 1,200 tonnes of propellant powder, an essential component of artillery, will be produced there each year to meet the dire needs imposed by support for Ukraine and rearmament in Europe.
Without powder, no shells: to remedy a bottleneck which is slowing down European production, the French group Eurenco is reopening a propellant powder factory for shells in France to cope with the shortage linked to the conflict in Ukraine and satisfy demand. desire to reconstitute a sovereign sector in this area.
“It will have taken less than two years to set up this factory, usually we talk about 4 to 5 years to increase capacity
,” explains the CEO of the public group, Thierry Francou, during a visit of the Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu.
Heir to the National Company of Powders and Explosives (SNPE), Eurenco invested 50 million euros in this new production tool and benefited from support of 10 million euros from the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) .
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“It’s a showcase of what should be done (...) when there is crisis management and you have to be a little imaginative
,” says Sébastien Lecornu.
France, which is pushing defense manufacturers to produce more and faster to respond to the new international situation, also wants to strengthen its sovereignty by creating national production capacities in order to depend less on vagaries abroad.
Eurenco has been manufacturing this propellant powder since 1915 in Bergerac, the only site in France dedicated to this production.
But in 2007,
"for the wrong reasons, decisions were taken (by the state shareholder, editor's note) to separate from certain elements of sovereignty and in particular the powder sector"
, according to the minister.
In the midst of a period of falling defense budgets throughout Europe, orders were too small.
A 24/7 production line
The 1,200 tonnes of powder produced each year in Bergerac will fill 500,000 modular charges, slipped into the cannon behind the shell to propel it.
This corresponds to
“95,000 complete shots”
, according to Eurenco.
A
“full shot”
consists of a shell, manufactured in France by Nexter, and modular propellant charges produced by Eurenco.
Depending on the distance to be reached - 40 kilometers for a Caesar cannon - up to six modular charges are required per shell fired.
The group was already assembling in Bergerac these modular charges made up of a nitrocellulose casing and igniter, also produced on the site, and powder, which is currently imported from the Eurenco site in Sweden or from suppliers in Germany and in Italy.
In a building, a yellow robot grabs a gray box arriving on a carpet, fills it with large granules of propellant powder, attaches an igniter and sticks on a cover.
“It’s like in a pharmacy, down to the gram
,” explains Fabrice Faure, production coordinator.
The production line is fully automated and operates 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Only six technicians supervise it behind control screens.
A second line is in operation on the site and, on the adjacent wasteland, Eurenco plans to install a third production line for modular loads in 2026. Enough to go from 500,000 to 1.2 million loads produced annually.
Because far from just French needs, Eurenco is a crucial link in the European munitions industry, supplying Nexter as well as the German Rheinmetall, the Polish PGZ and the Czech CSG.
Its order book is full until 2030.