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The EIB loan finances two linked investments at METLEN's historic Central Greece industrial footprint: (1) modernisation/expansion of bauxite mining in the Parnassus-Giona karst-bauxite belt, METLEN's long-standing ore source for its Aluminium of Greece alumina/aluminium complex, and (2) construction of a new gallium recovery line at the Agios Nikolaos (Viotia) complex, extracting gallium as a by-product of the Bayer-process alumina stream. The EIB frames this as Europe's first EIB-financed gallium production project — gallium currently has essentially no primary Western refining capacity, with China controlling roughly 90%+ of global supply following Beijing's 2023 export-licensing regime (see responds_to). The loan sits under the REPowerEU umbrella (typically used for energy-security-adjacent industrial financing) and is explicitly linked by EIB messaging to CRMA strategic-project and supply-security objectives. This is the third EIB facility extended to METLEN, indicating a continuing institutional relationship rather than a one-off transaction.
(non-Chinese) gallium supply chain — relevant comparator/precedent for CRMA Art. 24/25 strategic-project designations and for any EU gallium-refining capacity tracking.
broader Greek/EU financing book (Piraeus Bank Growth4MidCaps, Santander pan-EU supply-chain guarantee, Quantum Systems, etc. — same western-industrial-policy-stack theme).
company-level node for the EU critical-minerals capacity-building thesis — relevant to the minerals-axis company/node-level trade-idea work (see project memory on company-level lane).
the EIB press release; production-scale materiality (relative to EU gallium demand) is unconfirmed.
has not been separately confirmed via the EU strategic-projects list.