According to foreign reports on March 21st, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday that the deadline for negotiations on the return of New Caledonia's nickel industry to government assistance is the end of this month, ruling out the possibility of offering better terms.
The French government has been holding negotiations to rescue New Caledonia's nickel industry and has drafted an agreement to continue providing support.
Le Maire said, "I urge the signing of the nickel agreement by the end of March." "There is no room for change."
New Caledonia President Louis Mapou criticized the agreement as insufficient, but he still plans to submit the agreement to parliament, which will vote on March 28.
According to the proposed agreement, the French government, together with the local government, will provide subsidies of up to 200 million euros per year for energy prices and invest in electricity production to benefit local nickel factories.
Le Maire said that government assistance would help reduce production costs for local producers facing competition from cheap supplies from Indonesia, enabling them to be profitable.
Le Maire said that nickel companies will commit to supplying more products to Europe, which is trying to obtain nickel and other minerals to manufacture electric vehicle batteries.
High costs, political tensions, and Indonesian supply have led to weak international nickel prices, putting three nickel processing companies in New Caledonia—SLN, KNS, and Prony Resources—at risk of bankruptcy.
Mining group Eramet holds the majority stake in SLN, and the company has reached an agreement with the French government to remove hundreds of millions of euros in debt from SLN's balance sheet.
Since January of this year, the French government has been seeking to negotiate a comprehensive reform of the industry with nickel companies and local governments, but the agreement has proven difficult to reach, partly due to ongoing negotiations over constitutional reforms.
France has provided loans to help nickel processing companies avoid bankruptcy. But Eramet has refused to inject more funds into SLN, while KNS's co-owner, Glencore, suspended production at the KNS processing plant last month while seeking buyers for its stake.
