A 155 mm shell barrel machined at the Forges de Tarbes, April 4, 2023 in the Hautes-Pyrénées (AFP / Lionel BONAVENTURE)
Long in danger, the activity of the Forges de Tarbes, the only French industrial site still capable of producing 155 mm shell barrels, has been revived by the enormous needs of the Ukrainian forces for this type of ammunition.
Glowing steel barrels pile up near the forge core from which they have just emerged after being fashioned there at over 1,000 degrees.
In a few minutes, machined on other workstations, they will take their ogive shape, before joining the delivery pallets at the entrance to the factory.
155 mm shell barrels machined at the Forges de Tarbes, April 4, 2023 in the Hautes-Pyrénées (AFP / Lionel BONAVENTURE)
Since the fall, the Hautes-Pyrénées factory has been producing about 1,500 barrels of a 155 mm caliber shell, the LU.211, each month, which equips the dozens of Caesar guns supplied by France to Ukraine.
It is a “very powerful shell, the only one with a range of 42 km with a very high level of precision”, explains to AFP Jérôme Garnache-Creuillot, CEO of Europlasma, parent company of Forges de Tarbes.
– Extraordinary needs –
The site also plans to soon produce a more standard 155 mm, the M.107, to feed other types of guns used by Kiev because “today, we have extraordinary needs in Ukraine”, underlines Mr. Garnache- Creuillot.
Jérôme Garnache-Creuillot, CEO of Europlasma, parent company of the Forges de Tarbes where 155 mm shell barrels are machined, on April 4, 2023 in the Hautes-Pyrénées (AFP / Lionel BONAVENTURE)
These needs “represent much more than the combined production of all NATO countries”, he adds.
Ukraine fires 5 to 7,000 155 mm shells per day, or about 2 million per year, explains Anthony Cesbron, deputy general manager of Forges de Tarbes.
They intend to take their full part in the supply: “the priority is to acquire a production tool that allows us to go from 1,500 units per month to 5,000 then 10,000 and 15,000 on the horizon. 2025”, predicts Mr. Garnache-Creuillot.
To do this, modernizations are planned and the company is recruiting: from 25 employees at the start of the crisis, the workforce has increased to 30, should reach 50 at the end of 2023 and “more than 60 people in 2024”, according to Mr. Cesbron.
155 mm shell barrels machined at the Forges de Tarbes, April 4, 2023 in the Hautes-Pyrénées (AFP / Lionel BONAVENTURE)
In the medium term, the forges are also counting on the fact that the demand for 155 mm shells will be largely fueled by the need to replenish the stocks of NATO countries which are currently consumed by Ukraine.
And more broadly, insists Mr. Cesbron, the crisis has “brought to the fore the question of industrial sovereignty in the field of defense and made again important the interest of controlling the complete chain of ammunition manufacturing”.
In France, for 155mm shells, the Pyrenean forges are the first link in this chain, then completed by the Eurenco powder magazine in Bergerac (Dordogne, explosive charge) and the Nexter factory in La Chapelle-Saint-Ursin (Cher , final assembly).
An employee of the Forges de Tarbes where 155 mm shell barrels are machined, on April 4, 2023 in the Hautes-Pyrénées (AFP / Lionel BONAVENTURE)
For the Forges, one of the last active industrial remains of the old arsenal, once the economic heart of the Hautes-Pyrénées prefecture, “it’s a renewal and a return to basics”, believes Pierre Burtin, 55, entered apprenticeship at the age of 14 at the arsenal.
It was in 1982, at the time of its golden age and its approximately 3,000 employees. “Everyone had a cousin, an uncle, an aunt, a brother, a sister who worked there”.
– Wind of history –
The history of the Tarbes arsenal dates back to the 1870 war and the desire to keep this strategic industry as far away as possible from the border with Germany.
An essential supplier of French defence, the arsenal integrated into the GIAT (Industrial Grouping of Land Armaments) in 1971, declined with the end of the Cold War and the slowdown suffered by the armament industries.
An employee of the Forges de Tarbes where 155 mm shell barrels are machined, on April 4, 2023 in the Hautes-Pyrénées (AFP / Lionel BONAVENTURE)
Social plans and restructuring follow one another: over the years, the facilities of the arsenal close one after the other.
Today, around the forges – in fact the former howitzer of the arsenal – the urban landscape testifies to this past: to reach it, the road weaves between industrial wasteland, some rehabilitated, others with broken windows and with architecture eaten away by vegetation.
With the 21st century, the Forges, almost the only survivors of the arsenal, for a time abandoned the production of ammunition for the manufacture of fittings for oil drilling rods.
They went from buyer to buyer and, in the summer of 2021, only escaped judicial liquidation thanks to the takeover by Europlasma.
This group specializing in the treatment of hazardous waste was to gradually direct the site towards uses other than weapons.
But the winds of history and Vladimir Putin finally decided otherwise.
© 2023 AFP
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