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Eramet S.A.
Eramet is a French mining and metals company that digs up manganese, nickel, and mineral sands and sells them to industrial customers around the world.
Eramet is a mining and metals company. It pulls raw materials out of the ground — mainly manganese, nickel, and mineral sands — and sells them to factories and industrial buyers across the globe. Those materials end up in steel, stainless steel, batteries, pigments, and ceramics, so Eramet sits near the very start of a lot of supply chains that most people never see.
Manganese is the quiet giant of the business. Almost all steel needs a little manganese to make it strong and workable, and Eramet is one of the world's top producers, largely through its Moanda mine in Gabon — one of the richest manganese deposits on earth. Nickel is the second pillar: the company mines it in New Caledonia and Indonesia and sells it into stainless steel and, increasingly, the battery supply chain for electric cars. Mineral sands — titanium and zircon — round things out, feeding into paints, plastics, and ceramics. That mix makes Eramet a play on two very different stories at once. The old story is steel: steady, cyclical, and tied to construction and manufacturing. The new story is batteries. Eramet is betting that its nickel will help supply the electric-vehicle boom, and it has been building out processing in Indonesia, where most of the world's nickel growth is happening. That bet matters because nickel for batteries is a much faster-growing market than nickel for stainless steel, though it also comes with price swings and competition from huge Indonesian producers. The business is French, headquartered in Paris, but its heart is in remote places. Its mines sit in Gabon, New Caledonia, Indonesia, and Senegal, which means it carries real political and country risk — Gabon, for instance, had a coup in 2023 that put a spotlight on exactly the kind of jurisdiction Eramet operates in. It competes with much larger diversified miners such as Glencore and Vale in nickel and manganese, and it is far smaller than those giants. That size cuts both ways: it can be nimble, but it has less cushion when metal prices fall.
Eramet also has a refining and alloys arm, including the Aubert & Duval business it later sold, which made high-performance metals for aerospace and other demanding uses. Like all miners, its profits rise and fall with commodity prices, so a strong year can be followed by a weak one. What makes it interesting is the tug-of-war between its mature steel-facing business and its newer battery-facing push — and whether the nickel bet pays off as the world shifts toward electric cars.
Saved answer · last researched 14 Nov 2026