The sustainable steel company, which completed consultation for its first plant at Fos-sur-Mer* (a port city near Marseille, southeastern France) at the end of January, has successfully applied to France 2030 for the ‘Première Usine’ call for projects. The site will reduce CO2 emissions by up to 4 million tonnes a year.
GravitHy announced the news in a LinkedIn post. This is an important step for the company, whose shareholders include EIT InnoEnergy, Engie New Ventures, FORVIA, the IDEC group, Plug and Primetals Technologies. It welcomes the financial support provided by the French government, via France 2030 and Bpifrance, which will contribute to the development of this project.
Total investment amounts to 2.2 billion euros, creating 3,000 job opportunities.
GravitHy’s first plant will produce 2 million tonnes of low-carbon pre-reduced iron a year. This is known as DRI (direct
reduced of iron), which is obtained from low-carbon hydrogen produced by water electrolysis on site. This material will be used either locally, as a raw material for green steel, or marketed worldwide in the form of Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI).
A second plant is on its way
The rest is already underway. Last May, GravitHy announced teaming up with Plug, one of its shareholders, for its projects in Finland. The American group will dedicate one of the three plants it is building to DRI to produce sustainable steel. GravitHy will be setting up its second plant in Kristinestad, close to a former coal factory. Plug and GravitHy will produce green hydrogen with an electrolysis capacity of 1GW to produce 2 megatonnes per year of HBI/DRI, which will be exported from the port. The town is located in western Finland, on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia.
*The BarMar project will go through Fos.
Do you want to learn more about France and Finland? Then our latest articles on both countries should interest you. You can access all of our articles written about France here and about Finland there.
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Article written by Laurent Meillaud and translated by Mariem Ben Tili
