Is the investment of 50 million euros for the Elogen gigafactory which is about to be built in the Oratory park, near the Route du Mans, not far from the TGV station, called into question? On January 9, 2025, GTT, a technological and engineering group specializing in the transport and storage of liquefied gases of which Elogen has been a subsidiary since 2020, published a worrying press release.
New group policy?
“In a difficult market context for green hydrogen and a desire to limit the financing needs of its subsidiary Elogen, the GTT group (Gaztransport and Technigaz) announces that it is carrying out a strategic review of the latter’s activities. »
He continues by assuring that “this strategic review will lead the group to analyze all possible options concerning its subsidiary. The first conclusions should be presented in the coming weeks and, at the latest, when the 2024 annual results are announced. Until then, the group will refrain from any comments on the options considered. »
Contacted on Sunday January 12, Magali Marty Royer, vice-president of the Territoires Vendômois urban community in charge of the economy (CATV), said she did not have any more information.
An investment of €50 million for a unit of 200 employees in the long term
The project was announced in March 2022 by Bruno Lemaire, then Minister of the Economy, to integrate the European Piiec hydrogen program (Important Project of Common European Interest). At the time, all elected officials welcomed this news marking the acceleration of the development of the hydrogen sector in Center-Val de Loire.
Elogen committed to setting up in Vendôme, on a 9 hectare plot in a 20,000 m2 building2its gigafactory to open at the end of 2025 with 70 jobs at opening and 200 employees eventually. The unit is intended to manufacture stacks, central elements of electrolyzers where the reaction takes place which separates the water molecule into oxygen and hydrogen.
In December 2022, the general director of Elogen Jean-Baptiste Choimet confided: “It is a new generation gigafactory with greater capacity than that of the headquarters in Les Ulis, in Essonne, with a highly automated process… A challenge of industrial innovation (Elogen is the only French one to use electrolysis PEM with a proton exchange membrane), more than ever seen as one of the solutions to break dependence on fossil fuels such as gas and oil. »
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