Noyelles-Godault: From a distance, the mountains of tangled cables almost resemble the nearby slag heaps of northern France. We are indeed in a mining region, but an "urban mine." Here, no coal is used; we extract copper recovered from miles of old electrical cables collected all over France.
In Noyelles-Godault, in the Pas-de-Calais region, 36,000 tonnes of cables from building demolitions, machining waste and the Orange telephone network were recycled last year at the Recycâbles site, a joint venture created in 2008 by the Suez and Nexans groups.
After cutting, crushing, and grinding into smaller and smaller pieces throughout the noisy stages of the recycling process, glowing metal shot falls and accumulates in large bins. Its purity is "almost" as high as if it were extracted from a real mine, according to Christophe François, the site's operations manager.
"The principle is that of an urban mine; we seek out wealth where it has already been used to put it into a circular economy principle. And the objective is always to recover almost 100% of the copper or aluminum material and also to recycle the plastics that come from this operation," he explains.
Last year, 18,000 tonnes of copper and aluminium in the form of shot, and 13,000 tonnes of plastic shavings intended for the remanufacturing of car park slabs, in particular, were recovered.
A real boon in the era of global electrification. The red metal is strategic simply because, among other things, it has the ability to conduct electricity, making it essential for electric vehicles and for connecting wind farms to the grid.
However, the planet does not have enough virgin copper. The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned in 2024 of potential global tension, or even risks of shortages.
Ton surge
"Today, global copper consumption exceeds primary copper production capacity," summarizes Xavier Mathieu, vice president of metallurgy at the world's second-largest cable manufacturer, Nexans. And the cost of a ton of copper, which reached nearly $10,000 per ton in 2021, "no longer falls below $7,500," whereas it was worth little more than $1,500 two decades ago.
Recycling, initially promoted to reduce CO2 emissions from the mining sector, also has a definite economic appeal for operators like Nexans, which has decided to increase the production capacity of its copper smelter in Lens, the last in France, near Noyelles-Godault.
The new smelter under construction, a €90 million investment announced in October, is expected to recycle up to 80,000 tonnes of copper per year. Nexans plans to increase its production by more than 50% and achieve 30% recycled copper in its cables by 2030. All thanks to a circular economy system: with new metal refining equipment, it will now be able to integrate Noyelles-Godault granules.
Currently, "the pellets, small oblong balls, are too small and literally melt in our furnaces" at high temperatures, explains Mr. Mathieu. The Noyelles-Godault shot is therefore almost all exported, while the neighboring Nexans factory imports new copper and does not have enough recycled copper for its cables.
According to a report by Olivier Wyman published in November, the lack of investment in the complete metal recycling loop is widespread in France, with the country recycling only a tiny fraction of its used metal collection. Of the 218,000 tons of copper waste collected, only 66,000 are recycled domestically, while the country consumes 257,000 tons per year. And 206,000 tons are exported.
The "made in France" raw material is more than welcome at a time when between 35% and 70% of global metal refining capacity is in the hands of China, according to a report by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.
And Nexans needs it. On Tuesday, the group announced a billion-euro deal to supply 450 kilometers of high-voltage submarine cables to connect wind farms off the coast of Normandy and Oléron, which are scheduled to be commissioned in 2031 and 2032.
Also on Tuesday, ten of the 47 industrial projects selected by Brussels to promote the extraction, processing and recycling of "strategic" metals in order to reduce dependence on China and secure industrial supplies, concern copper: they are located in Spain, Finland, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Romania.
