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‘Third of French wine production lost’ due to cold snap

At least a third of French wine production this year, representing almost €2 billion in sales, will be lost due to a bout of unusually cold early spring weather, a federation said Wednesday.

Published: 15 April 2021 08:11 CEST

'Third of French wine production lost' due to cold snap

A winemaker in Le Landreau, near Nantes, checks his vines to see if there is any life left. Photo: Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / AFP

National Federation of Agricultural Holders’ Unions (FNSEA) secretary general Jérôme Despey told AFP that the estimate was made after consultations with all the players in the sector.

The rare freezing temperatures that have caused some of the worst damage in decades to crops and vines struck across France earlier this month, with the consequences compounded by the fact the cold snap came after warm weather.

IN PICTURES: French vineyards ablaze with candles in bid to ward off frosts

“We should have six bunches of grapes per vine. Now we’re hoping for maybe one,” Michael Gerin told AFP at his 17-hectare property in the heart of the Rôone valley, one of the country’s prime wine-growing regions.

READ ALSO: ‘We’ve lost at least 70,000 bottles’ – French winemakers count the cost of late frosts

“This is probably the greatest agricultural catastrophe of the beginning of the 21st century,” Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie said on Monday, adding that France has never seen such an frost wave in early spring. The government is preparing an emergency package of measures.

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Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

READ ALSO:

The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa.

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology.

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces.

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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