State's Foot In The Nickel Door
p. 11 · Read in the full issue
From a Noumea correspondent
The largest industrial enterprise in New Caledonia, the French mining company Societe Le Nickel (SLN), is being joined by a state-controlled oil company to form a subsidiary to operate SLN mining installations in New Caledonia.
The new company, the name of which was not immediately worked out, will comprise equal share holdings by the SLN and its new partner, Aquitaine Petroleum (SNPA).
The state-controlled oil group will take up 50 per cent of the new com pany which has asset backing evaluated at 1,142 million French Francs (SAI6O million). SNPA will thus pay over half this value to the SLN hold ing company. The new company will take on SLN debts which have accumu lated over the past two years of trading loss (1973 loss was about 150 million FF, then about SA2S million).
Installations being taken over comprise the SLN’s nickel leases and smelting factory in New Caledonia as well as the refinery at Le Havre, in France. In order to extend operations, the two partners are preparing an increase in capital. An initial injection of 200 million FF (SA3O million) will help stabilise the company’s finances as well as contributing to raising pro duction capacity at the Noumea smelters to 75,000 tonnes, from the current capacity of 60,000 tonnes (since the close-down of the three blast furnaces).
Aquitaine originally came to New Caledonia associated with US Free port Minerals as a counter proposition to Canadian Inco’s bid to work the island’s southern lateritic nickel ore. Aquitaine has also sought oil leases off the mainland and around the Chesterfield Islands.
The new partnership was forecast by SLN president, Baron Guy Roths child, when he told shareholders in June, 1973 of the vacuum created by the withdrawal of the US Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical Corporation from its joint SLN subsidiary, Neo-Caledonien du Nickel (NCN). It was Kaiser which helped finance the building of two new Elkem and three giant Demag furnaces begun in the late 19605.
Now, the takeover of nickel operations in New Caledonia by a state controlled company reinforces the policy of the French Government to keep foreign interests out of the island and, in the absence of private capital, to jump in with state finance to control the development of Caledonian nickel reserves.