Minister Fitzgibbon calls on BASF to clarify its intentions in Bécancour

2023-11-08 00:27:50

The Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, no longer expects to see the chemical giant BASF set up in Bécancour. He even hopes that the German company will abandon its project in the Quebec battery sector.

“I hope they don’t come, because we don’t have any more room. We have 15 billion investments,” he said on Tuesday.

The minister then called on the chemical giant to clarify its intentions. “Let them decide, whether they say yes or no,” he asked. He was reacting to a text from Duty which reported BASF’s declining interest in the Bécancour industrial park. The company was to open a battery manufacturing and recycling plant for electric vehicles there in 2025.

“I think they’re going to say no because obviously, the cathodes, you have to be careful not to have them everywhere. So, I think they understood that probably, they did not have any customers,” the minister continued. He also confirmed the information that BASF had failed to find a partner in the automotive sector to get its project off the ground.

After the announcement of the BASF project in Bécancour, automobile manufacturers General Motors (GM) and Ford both indicated that they had formed consortia with manufacturers of active cathode materials (GM with Posco Future M; Ford with EcoProBM and the cellulier SK On). “You have to understand: EcoPro, Ford make the cathodes for their own supply. So, BASF, if they wanted to sell to GM or Ford, well, there are no more customers,” explained the minister.

“It’s normal what’s happening,” Mr. Fitzgibbon continued. “What we saw was that the battery chain chain integrated completely. »

“We’re going to do something else”

The BASF installation in Bécancour was presented in March 2022 as an “ambitious project” for Quebec by Minister Fitzgibbon. The federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, for his part, described BASF as “a key partner in the battery ecosystem in Canada”.

Battery sector ????
With the arrival of a player like @BASF_Catalysts, it is a new chapter towards a sector which will eventually transform our minerals all the way to batteries. It is an ambitious project that will mark the Quebec economy for the coming decades.

— Pierre Fitzgibbon (@MinFitzgibbon) March 4, 2022

As recently as May, the Quebec government included BASF in its list of “companies already well established” in the “energy transition valley innovation zone”, deployed between Bécancour, Trois-Rivières and Shawinigan. A few months later, the minister assured that he could do without BASF.

“Bécancour is the greatest success in the history of Quebec. The world that tells me that we don’t have BASF: it doesn’t matter. We have never seen a project like this in Quebec. Never,” Mr. Fitzgibbon insisted. If the German company turns its back on Quebec, “we will do something else,” he assured. Land is reserved for BASF in Bécancour until the spring, confirmed the Fitzgibbon firm. And it is coveted by others, the minister suggested.

“I have other, more relevant projects,” he said. “ [Pour] the cathodes, I think we are correct. But in the battery chain, there are several components: sulfate, nickel, cobalt. We have all kinds of other products, separators. There is perhaps something else that will complement it,” added the elected official. The project which could replace that of BASF will therefore not be one for manufacturing active cathode materials or recycling, but rather a project intended for something else “related to batteries”.