Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and thank you for being with us this morning for the presentation of the financials for 2021 for Eramet Group. We're delighted to be with you here this morning to share with you our excellent results from the year that has just ended. This comes from the strategic transformation and managerial transformation that we started to implement four years ago now that has clearly changed the group. Despite a business environment that has been chaotic over the period, we've been able to deliver on all of our promises. From a strategic standpoint, we have been able to reorient our portfolio and accelerate our repositioning for the group on mining and metals, which are growth drivers.
Beyond strong growth in mining production in 2021, we've also been able to achieve a significant step forward with the divestment of Aubert & Duval, Sandouville, and the restart of the lithium project. Furthermore, we have positioned ourselves as a responsible company that helps society. This is something that's been important to the group since I arrived. Working with people to save the environment and to save the climate have now been recognized by everyone. On top of that, we have excellent financials that show the relevance of our new operating model. Our financials also show the engagement and agility of all of our teams in the field that have been able to adapt over the last four years to a business environment that, as I said, has been very up and down.
This new model is generating a lot of cash, as you can see on the slide. Our free cash flow in 2021 is EUR 426 million, excluding the divested activities. More than EUR 400 million if you were to include them. This has enabled us to de-leverage and to move into 2022 with a lot of elbow room. If we drill down a little bit into what we've done since 2018, you may remember that back in 2018, I presented our new strategic roadmap. There were three legs to that chair. First of all, we wanted to fix and reposition our least performing assets. The second leg of the plan was grow our attractive businesses with a strong organic growth. Then thirdly, expanding and developing our portfolio in metals for energy transition.
All of this is supported with a digital and managerial transformation within the group at the same time, allowing us to be more agile and higher performance. If we look at what we've achieved, and I'll be coming back to this a little bit later. We even over-delivered in a number of our targets. If we look at what happened in 2021 was a year of ramp up for our repositioning in mining and metals. We finished the divestment of Sandouville at the very end of 2021, and just at the beginning of this year, we signed an MoU for the divestment of Aubert & Duval.
For the second pillar, grow our attractive businesses, we've achieved a four-year organic growth of more than 200% of our mining business, 75% in 2021, if you include Weda Bay at 100% booked. Expanding into metals for energy transition has started up with the restart at the beginning of this year of the construction for our lithium project in Argentina. Given the current lithium prices, this should be extremely profitable and should contribute EBITDA as well as a lot of ROI. All of this also demonstrates the new agility within the Eramet teams. They've been able to adapt to any circumstances and have been able to seize any opportunities as they arose throughout 2021. That was strategy, and I will be coming back to that at the end of the presentation. Let's talk CSR now.
We have clearly positioned ourselves as a gold standard in our industry when it comes to CSR and when it comes to sustainability. We have continued our high performance on our roadmap, which is a demanding roadmap based on 13 targets in 2021. We achieved 104% of our roadmap and our targets as we set them for 2021. Let me give you a couple of examples when it comes to safety. We're particularly proud of our results. We've been able to slash by two the number of accidents in 2021. This comes after four years of regular drops as well, significant drops. We are now amongst the best performers for safety in the industry, especially for our mining and metal division. We have a TF2 at 1.5.
That puts us ahead of the pack in the industry for safety, and we're extremely proud of that achievement. This is extremely important for everyone who works for Eramet. Our employees, our contractors, and all of our stakeholders. We're also working to improve diversity in our teams. As it stands, we have 26% of our managers who are women, and we aim to drive that up to 30% quickly. We've also increased our social impact support, especially on our African sites. Let me give you a couple of figures to illustrate this. We have provided medical support to more than 22,000 people. We've been able to improve drinking water access to more than 13,000 people, and we have worked on education and been able to improve learning conditions for more than 14,000 students in the regions where we work.
Moving on to climate and the fight against climate change, we're also moving forward quickly. Since the beginning of the roadmap on Scope 1 and 2, we've been able to drive down our CO₂ intensity by 39%. Our roadmap has now been approved by SBTi. That's for 2021. When it comes to biodiversity, we are also doing a lot. In 2021, we were able to rehabilitate 30% more land area than what we used for industry, so we're reducing our impact on biodiversity. Furthermore, the group act4nature approved our roadmap in its biodiversity commitment. We also had the inauguration of the Lékédi Biodiversity Foundation, which is the first such foundation in Gabon. All of these commitments and all of this progress has been widely recognized by ratings agencies. They have us among the best performers among our peers.
This is true for climate with a score of B with the CDP amongst some of the best companies in our sector. Vigeo, we have the advanced level, which puts us third out of 44 companies in our sector. Also on the Sustainalytics, we've been able to significantly improve our score with them. We're currently signing up to the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, known as IRMA, and we have already started to assess our mining sites based on that reference grid, which is an international one and a very demanding one. All of this strong operational and financial progress, also CSR progress, has led to strong financial results in 2021. Given that the 2021 environment was a buoyant one, mining production, as I explained, is up 75%.
If you look at our production for nickel ore, we produced nearly 20 million tons of nickel ore in 2021. If you book 100% of Weda Bay, that's more than double what we had last year. 7 million tons of manganese ore in Gabon, that's up 21% versus 2020, and is more than double what we had four years ago. This makes our mine the largest manganese ore mine in the world. Year on year, we've been able to improve our mining production, which means that we can fully ride the strong dynamics in the market, and this has led to strong financial performance throughout the financial year with EBITDA that is now above EUR 1 billion. This is the double of 2020, and more important than that, it's a significant increase, more than 60% up versus 2019.
This two-year increase is entirely due to intrinsic performance, more than EUR 450 million over the period. 2020 was a year of a drop-off of prices and all outside factors. 2021, it rallied. Over two years, those external factors are a wash for Eramet, which means that all the increase, more than 60% increase in EBITDA between 2019 and 2021 comes from our own internal intrinsic progress. That's a great sign of the strength of our model, and we're extremely proud of it. Our free cash flow, as I was explaining, EUR 400 million or 526, if you exclude discontinued operations or the ones that are currently being divested. This has enabled us to deleverage with a leverage ratio versus EBITDA that is under 1x with more elbow room and room for maneuver.
We've been able to resume payout by paying dividends to our shareholders, which is, of course, extremely important in the long term, and this is a commitment that we continue to uphold with that distribution ratio in the long term. In 2021, we were able to restore our economic fundamentals, and that means that we are strong moving into 2022. Before we get into the financial performance and the roadmap for 2022, I would like to give the floor to Thomas Devedjian to tell you all about the financials.
Thank you, Christel. Good morning to you all. I'm pleased to present the 2021 financial results. Just a comment to begin with. We applied IFRS 5. That is to say, we restated assets held for sale, Aubert & Duval, Erasteel, and Sandouville, three activities. You won't see in the P&L in the financial statements the performance of those activities. They appear on a single line, and so we presented the financial statements consistent with IFRS 5 on the basis of the new scope, mines and metals, excluding assets held for sale and discontinued. You see outstanding results of the continuing operations in 2021. We increased our sales by 30%. Our net income for these continuing operations is close to EUR 800 million, whereas the net income of discontinued operations is negative, EUR -4 million to EUR -6 million.
Once again, Aubert & Duval, Erasteel, and Sandouville. In those EUR -426 million, you have EUR -348 million. That's the impact of the sale of Aubert & Duval, for which we signed a memorandum of understanding two days ago. Now, in spite of that impact, the net income group share remains significant, close to EUR 300 million, and our net debt is down sharply from EUR 1.378 billion to EUR 936 million at the end of 2021, which gives us a leverage net debt, EBITDA ratio of 0.9 times, placing us at a very reasonable level. EBITDA performance that exceeds the EUR 1 billion mark and doubles over the period on continued operations.
You can see that this improvement is due to a sharp improvement of intrinsic operating performance, irrespective of price effects, EUR 164 million, primarily volume increases in line with our targets pretty much across the board, except for SLN, that suffered from a number of difficulties during the course of the year, and Christel will return to that later. Furthermore, we benefit from a favorable price environment in manganese alloys. First and foremost, a very significant increase in prices of between EUR 300 million and EUR 400 million, a very sharp increase.
The price of nickel also rose by almost EUR 200 million, but we had to suffer the impact of the increase of our inputs, and in particular, the increase of freight costs, for which we suffered the increase in sea transport for some EUR 200 million for the year. These external factors are on the whole very favorable, an improvement of EUR 437 million, and that gives us EBITDA of EUR 1.051 billion. If we include the EBITDA of activities held for sale, it is down EUR 20.10 Million. EUR 298 net income Group share due to several factors because of the transaction with Tsingshan at the end of last year, we revalued our stake in our lithium project, taking into account the reference value, which improves by EUR 117 million.
Other operating income and expenses, and furthermore, we had expenditure, of course, on the lithium project that we maintained and that we have restarted, and we benefit from our share in Weda Bay. Let me remind you that we hold 43% of Weda Bay, and that contributes to our net income to the tune of EUR 1-1 million. Of course, we paid taxes in Gabon for some EUR 50 million, in Norway, EUR 25 million, and also in France, EUR 23 million in income taxes, where we of course generate profits on discontinued activities, minus EUR -4 million to EUR-6 million. I mentioned that with the impact of the Aubert & Duval divestment that involves, of course, requires consultation of the staff.
Representative bodies will allow a signature before the end of the first half and a closing of the transaction expected, given the antitrust authorities, that this timeframe, hopefully between now and the end of the year. Our CapEx were strictly monitored and controlled over the period 2021. We limited our investments to those with a very rapid payback, and you can note that our CapEx in 2021 were at a reasonable level, just over EUR 300 million, EUR 140 current CapEx to maintain our equipment.
That's a low point following our resolve to control our cash and EUR 170 million, give or take, for our growth, the CapEx, the large part being represented by supporting mining production growth in Gabon, investments to continue to grow the production of the Moanda mine and also sustain rail transport through the investment we're making and to renovate the track and, of course, accelerate the increase of this transport to keep pace with the increase in production. In 2022, we plan to invest a bigger amount, EUR 550 million, excluding lithium CapEx, because Tsingshan, our partner, will finance the share. Since we've already financed ours, it will fund the full CapEx to be undertaken.
This amount to be added to the EUR 550 million consolidated in our P&L, of course, because we hold the majority of this lithium company. Out of the EUR 550, EUR 300 will be for current CapEx and EUR 200 million for growth CapEx in Gabon to support the growth in production and the ramp up in transportation. Working capital requirement has increased by EUR 160 million this year, but in proportion slower than our sales. That reflects a good containment of our WCR that we're tracking closely. You see a number of days of sales we've reduced the WCR because it represents a decrease of three days of sales. That is, given the good performance of last year, once again successful WCR control.
Our free cash flow generation, as Christel said earlier, is very significant. You can see that Mines and Metals division generates almost EUR 700 million in free cash flows, the largest part represented by the manganese BU ore and alloys for some EUR 500 million. There's the ramp up of production of manganese ore, but also very good performance of manganese alloys. We both increased our production, improved our mix in terms of refined products against the backdrop of very favorable price environment. We're able to deliver that performance. Nickel, of course, we need to take into account the free cash flow of Weda Bay, EUR 146 million FCF, the distribution of dividends and the commercial margin that we generate on the production share that we market. Mineral sands delivered a very good year, EUR 115 million in FCF.
Lithium is still to come, and we're still in a spending phase. All in all, group free cash flow, once again, under IFRS 5 on continued activities stands at EUR 5 million-EUR 6 million. That's a four-fold increase in cash flow generation, considerable, versus 2020. Thanks to that, we were able to sharply deleverage our balance sheet. Our net debt stood at EUR 1,378 million at the end of 2020. Thanks to this strong contribution of our free cash flow of the Mines and Metals division of EUR 5 million-EUR 6 million, we were able to significantly improve our net debt. Of course, operations that are being discontinued had a negative contribution of EUR 125 million.
That means that all in all, net debt in the IFRS 5 scope, EUR 936 million and net debt of activities held for sale, EUR 990 million. Very good reduction in net debt. Liquidity, EUR 2 billion in financial liquidity, about EUR 1 billion for our RCF and EUR 1 billion for available cash. Our RCF was fully repaid. We ended repayment in January, so it's totally undrawn at this point in time. In July, we repaid early the TiZir bond that funded our growth in mineral sands in Senegal. It was quite a costly debt, and that was repaid early, which led to a cash out of EUR 240 million as an early repayment and of course reduces gross debt and cost of debt.
We have no significant maturities before 2024. As you can see, in 2024 we have a first bond to be repaid of EUR 500 million, and in 2025, one of EUR 300. There's the government loan to SLN for just under EUR 200 million maturing in 2024. Given our financial situations, we're very comfortable. We have all the time necessary to refund those bonds or to repay them without difficulty at maturity. Our capital allocation, how does it stand? As you can see, our priority is significant deleveraging, number one priority. In 2021 we devoted EUR 388 million to reducing that net debt, and we plan to continue that deleveraging effort.
Our target is to be at a leverage below one times EBITDA on average through the cycle, and to maintain a strong balance sheet in order to secure the financial sustainability through the cycle of our group, while maintaining a measure of flexibility in order to seize investment opportunities. Second priority after debt reduction, our growth CapEx. We maintain a disciplined investment policy by focusing our CapEx on organic growth, brownfield projects with very swift paybacks and attractive returns. That's our priority. We also have in our portfolio, and Christel will discuss those, we have some strategic greenfield projects that can be achieved through partnership with a limited risk. In 2021 we devoted EUR 173 million to those growth CapEx.
Lastly, third priority in our capital allocation, and when that becomes possible with the financial situation allowing for that, and that's the case this year, we plan to pay a dividend to our shareholders. We'll propose to the AGM this year at EUR 2.5 per share, which will be a cash out for the group of just over EUR 70 million. That's a reasonable amount. Lastly, we ensure that we maintain minimum cash reserves to successfully manage our operations and weather any change in the cycle. That's a minimum of EUR 500 million. That's part of our criterion points of attention. Thank you. Back to Christel.
Merci, Thomas. Thank you for that, Thomas. Let's take a look at our operational performance now in our various business units. This will also be the opportunity to talk about the next step in our strategic roadmap. When it comes to operational performance, this year has been a record-breaking year when it comes to production. We're very proud of that. Breaking records left and right, except at SLN, where we suffered from strong external factors in 2021. It's been a very difficult year, and I'll come back to it in a minute. However, overall, in manganese, we've achieved 7 million tons of ore produced, as I mentioned. That is 20% up. Manganese alloys are also up with an excellent mix, with a lot more refined alloys out of the mix, because we can get better margins on those.
On nickel, where Weda Bay has increased its production four-fold, an increase in production of ferro alloys as well. For SLN, despite those external factors that I mentioned, we've been able to maintain the 5 million tons of ore produced, and we were also able to increase our exports. However, ferronickel production is significantly down. For the mineral sands business unit, again, record production above 800,000 tons, and TiO2 above 200,000 tons, which is a record for that operation. All of these excellent production levels have been achieved in a price environment that is in our favor, but also in a wider environment of an increase in prices for a lot of our inputs. An impact of about EUR 280 million in 2021 came from that.
Generally, the increase in the freight costs, which I'm sure you're all familiar with, two of our main routes for manganese and for nickel are illustrated here on the slide, and you can see that they are up 160% and 250% respectively. Huge spikes year on year in freight costs. There's a slight slowdown in the second half of 2021 after the spike mid-year, but we're likely to see freight costs that are still very high into 2022. At least no significant improvement for container freight costs and the loose shipping that we use for our ores may improve, but the average in 2022 will still be higher than the average for 2021.
Energy costs also spiked in 2021, and it's unlikely that the news we had this morning is gonna drive down those costs anytime soon. Thankfully, here at Eramet, 80% of our power purchases are protected by long-term agreements, particularly in Norway for our Norwegian plants. This enables us to significantly blunt the blow of the increase of energy costs, especially for those manganese alloys. However, at SLN, we are fully exposed to Brent price rises, as we have an oil energy plant there, and we are fully exposed to the strong increase in coke spot prices, which increased by 115% in 2021 in Europe versus 2020. That is going to continue to weigh on our costs in 2022.
Strong inflation in the cost of our inputs, and that is going to continue to weigh down our books in 2022. If we take a look at each business unit individually, starting with manganese. For manganese, we have excellent operational performance in a price environment that has been in our favor and very good for manganese alloys. The manganese business unit multiplied its EBITDA by 2, EUR 900 million, and its free cash flow was also multiplied by more up to EUR 490 million, up 72%. This is due to increases in production, of course, increases in the mix quality, and also a significant increase in the prices for manganese alloys, +38% for those prices at invoice. These are the prices that we billed in 2021 versus 2020.
You may know that there's a lag period of 3 months between the indices and the prices increasing. We still have a further 39% increase for Q4 2021 versus Q3 2021 in the indices, and that is going to start to come into our books in our invoice prices in the first quarter of 2022. Overall, a strong uptick in trends for our manganese business unit. We are expecting those prices to come back to nominal levels in the second part of 2022, but overall, the average in 2022 is likely to be slightly higher than 2021. These good prices are due to demand on the market, of course, over 2021. We saw an increase in the production price of carbon steel, +4% over the year, despite the slowdown in China in the second half.
This was due to the trade issues on steel production and energy costs. An increase in manganese ore production was only 1.3%. There were a number of issues in some large mines, including in Brazil, and there were also transport issues in South Africa. This means that inventories are down. That is the gray part of the graph that you can see on the bottom right. These are manganese ore stocks. All of this drove up the price about 15%, but that was entirely offset by the freight costs increasing, so invoice prices have not increased. However, the red line is the manganese alloys prices with strong demand and also production. The manganese alloy producers have experienced issues throughout 2021 due to the COVID crisis, due to the increases in energy costs and other factors.
We were able to produce throughout this and to achieve those good results that you know. If we look at Moanda, the mine is continuing to ramp up. You can see that we increased our production 20% to 7 million tons as we opened up the new Okouma Plateau in 2020. Strong growth of 63% over the last three years for volume produced. We transported 6.5 million tons. There's a small part of the product that is used on-site rather than being transported away. It's sent to our Gabonese alloy plant. It is true that we were hamstrung by transport despite the significant improvements that we've made to the Trans-Gabon Railway, especially in the second half of the year. Remember that the first half of the year we were suffering from a number of issues on that transport line.
Now we're at a good transport throughput, which is in line with our expectations. For 2022, we are forecasting production and transport of 7.5 million tons of ore in Gabon. All of that comes with a cash cost, which is very good for us. It was stable throughout 2021, despite an increase related to forex and fixed costs that increased because we opened the new plateau. That did increase fixed costs, but that was offset by good productivity, especially with the increase in volume. Overall, in Moanda, we now have the largest manganese ore mine in the world with a cash cost, which is excellent in the first quartile of the cash cost curve. If we move on now to the nickel business unit, once again here we are seeing good improvements.
EBITDA, which increased two-fold up to EUR 113 million. Free cash flow increased three-fold to EUR 111 million against the backdrop of the increase in prices of LME and also nickel ore up 32%. As I was saying earlier, the Weda Bay mine is now at 14 million tons, which is a four-fold increase over the previous year. Excellent production levels from them. Despite the upheavals, production was stable at SLN at 5.4 million tons. This means that overall at Eramet, if you include Weda Bay at 100%, and you know that we now operate the Weda Bay mine, we produced about 20 million tons of nickel ore in a good business environment. Weda Bay significantly contributed to free cash flow.
Overall, EUR 146 million, as Thomas explained, of cash flow coming directly from Weda Bay, especially through the dividends. It's a mine that has excellent positioning on the cash cost curve as well. All of this happened in a buoyant market for nickel demand, up 17% demand for primary nickel in 2021. This is exceptional, and we were almost at 2.8 million in demand, which is huge. Up 16% for Inox, plus 64% for batteries. Batteries accounted for 30% of growth of demand for nickel in 2021. This has pushed LME prices up plus 34%. As you can see, stock levels have crashed. They are now at extremely low levels. We have about two weeks in reserve, which is something that we haven't seen for a very long time.
Especially with the issues coming up with Russia, this is a sector that is likely to remain under a lot of tension. As you know, I'm sure Russia is the fourth or third largest worldwide producer of nickel. Excellent performance in Weda Bay, as we've already said, 14 million tons produced. We sold 10 million of those tons. 4 million tons are limonites that have been stored for future needs. We're expecting to produce 15 million tons in 2022 out of Weda Bay. We produced 39,000 tons of ferro alloys in Weda Bay, up 66% versus the previous year. We're expecting 40 million tons in 2022. Over at SLN, as I said, it's been a difficult year.
Thanks to the good market environment and despite the issues that affected production in 2021, SLN has achieved cash break-even level in 2021. That's important. We didn't lose any money with SLN. It's important to note. Ore production remained stable thanks to our efforts. We were expecting an increase. We were able to keep it even. Exports are up 17%, about 3 million tons. However, the plant had issues with supply, with ferronickel down 18%. Ferronickel production down 18%, which affected the cash cost because there are fixed costs at the plant. We also had the impact of the increase in energy costs. All of that being said, we were able to achieve some significant milestones in SLN production. We were finally able to achieve a couple of weeks ago, authorization to export a further 2 million tons.
This means that we can export more than 4 million tons in 2022. You need to invest before we can push up to that 6 million tons, which is our target set for 2025. The next step that we need to achieve to continue our SLN plan is to have access to more competitively priced power. We have ongoing discussions with the New Caledonian authorities and the French state for a new energy plan for Caledonia, and we hope that that is going to lead us to be able to have more competitive energy prices there. We're looking to get back to nominal levels of production and our previous production levels above 45 million tons in 2022.
If we take a look at mineral sands, once again, excellent financial performance with a price environment which has been in our favor, up 51% EBITDA, EUR 137 million. Free cash flow 2.5 times at more than EUR 100 million, EUR 108 million. We've been breaking production level records overall for the GCO mine and also for production of zircon. We've also broken production records in our Norwegian mine. All of this against the backdrop of increasing prices, significantly up, especially in the second half for zircon. Prices up 24% in the second financial half and 12% for the whole year. There are supply issues in the market.
There are production issues that are occurring with a number of suppliers, and this means that there is a lot of tension currently on that market, especially for zircon, but also for titanium dioxide. You can see prices for titanium dioxide that are up with the prices that went significantly up in the second financial half as well. We're likely to see higher prices moving into 2022 with production levels that aren't able to keep up with demand. I've already discussed production. We have record-breaking production levels. At GCO, we are continuing to increase year on year our production. This enables us to offset in part the fact that for the last two years, we have entered a lower yield phase of the vein. We should get back to higher ore content from 2023 and beyond.
We believe we're going to produce more than 750,000 tons for HMC at GCO in 2022. 2021 was an important year for us and for the third part of our roadmap. This is the year during which we're starting up the lithium plant once again. As you remember, that was mothballed in the first half of 2021. As you know, lithium demand is booming right now. There really is extremely strong demand with a lot of tension on supply for lithium in the market. You can see the demand forecasts are quite impressive. We're at about 500,000 tons right now of production with demand, and we're expecting that to go above 2 million tons by 2030. A huge increase there for equivalent carbonate.
You can see the impact on prices here, with prices beyond $60,000 per ton for LCE and for hydroxide, in fact. This is 10 times the price that we had at the beginning of 2021. A dynamic market that is under a lot of stress. The outlook for our projects is looking even better, and that's why we're continuing to ramp it up. This is a project, as you know, that should produce 24,000 tons of lithium carbonate with a cash cost that is extremely competitive in the first quartile of the cash cost curve. Long-term prices are relatively conservative given the prices today, but this is what we're working with about a bit less than $13,000 per ton.
About 30% internal rate of return with an EBITDA at about $200 million once the plant is at nominal capacity. A very profitable project, as you can see. We're currently building the factory. We're hoping to start it up in the first half of 2024 and to have achieved full ramp up during 2025. This would make Eramet the first European company to operate a lithium complex of this size. This comes on top of a process that uses a lot less water than the traditional processes. This is for the overview of our operations. Now I'd like to move on just for a few minutes to our strategic roadmap as this is a turning point for us.
We're really at a watershed, as I said. We presented a strategic roadmap in 2018 with three pillars. The first was to fix or reposition our least performing assets. That's almost done. Sandouville has been divested. Aubert & Duval currently being divested. The Erasteel, that divestment process should be completed this year in 2022. You see we've put it in assets held for sale. At SLN, a major milestone in the recovery with the 6 million tons and discussions ongoing on energy. On the growth front for our attractive businesses, I won't return to that. There we overachieved, outperformed considerably everything we promised in 2018. Big success by the Eramet teams, and we've begun our pillar three. We really are delivering what we planned.
That is to say, to become a pure player in mining and metals. Today we're proposing a new strategic roadmap, this time with two components which really positions Eramet as a pure player in mining and metals and genuinely contributing to a sustainable future for the industry with two focus areas. The first is to contribute to the growth in metals, supporting global economic growth. These are infrastructure construction markets that are growing with the global economy and still growing across developing countries. That's our business in manganese, in nickel for industrial and daily usage, stainless steel and others, and our applications of mineral sands in construction, ceramics, et cetera.
We have this second stream that is growing strongly, which is to develop critical metals for the energy transition with lithium, the current project, but also the subsequent phases, because we have a deposit in Argentina, which means that we can have several plant construction phases. As you know, we have exploration at Eramet. We'll continue to explore to open new mines in the future in lithium, in our traditional business or nickel cobalt. We also have a plan with BASF, a project for a nickel cobalt plant at [Gneissau] on the Weda Bay mine. That project is progressing well. We plan to accelerate it on the back of very strong demand, and places are being taken now. We're moving forward fast, and we'll come back to you with a program on that project.
We're also advancing and accelerating our project in battery recycling. You can see that it's a portfolio that's extremely well-positioned with the current metals boom. There's talk of a new metals age. Eramet is fortunate in being at the right place with the right portfolio, both for infrastructure and energy transition. Its businesses are very well-positioned on the price curve, all of them, and hold promise of cash generation. They have an advantage, and we have an unmatched advantage, which in our portfolio, we have products and high-grade ores that are particularly useful to our clients who seek to reduce their carbon footprint in most of our plants. Leaving aside SLN, that we have low carbon energy, decarbonized energy. We have a CO₂ reduction pathway, very ambitious, aggressive, certified by SBTi.
We are a benchmark in terms of CSR for biodiversity, the environment and communities positioned on metals that will assist and strongly contribute to the energy transition. We do have the right portfolio at the right time in order to significantly contribute to the fight against climate change and in favor of energy transition. That's what I wish to say about the strategy. Well, in conclusion, as you've seen, we're beginning 2022 in a far more solid position, and we're prepared to embark on a new growth phase for Eramet. Thus far, 2022 was looking very good. Looking good in terms of market demand. The markets are very well-oriented at the beginning of the year. Of course, there was some uncertainty regarding demand in China, but that was broadly positive.
Of course, we have the geopolitical context in Europe that is becoming far more challenging. Prices are currently staying at high levels. We've continued to raise our ambitions in terms of organic growth in our mines. For 2022, we plan to achieve 7.5 million manganese ore in Gabon, more than 4 million nickel ore export in New Caledonia. 15 million nickel ore production 100% at Weda Bay. We plan to increase CapEx on the back of this fine momentum. We need to invest in growth CapEx, so we have a target of some EUR 550 million of cash CapEx for 2022, of which some EUR 200 million to support and secure organic growth in Gabon. An EBITDA target of around EUR 1.2 billion based on the assumptions outlined here that may change.
Manganese alloy selling price is slightly higher than those of 2021 on average through 2022. An average consensus for manganese ore price of 5.2 DMTU. Average consensus for nickel price of $19,000 per ton, higher energy and coke prices versus 2021. Against this backdrop and with those assumptions, we plan an EBITDA of the order of EUR 1.2 billion cash generation that is quite significant. That will allow us to reach the CapEx shown here. Of course, we plan to be very strongly cash positive, even with the CapEx indicated here, and to be able to continue a deleveraging pathway. Of course, we'll be working at accelerating our projects, notably the lithium project.
In conclusion, 2022 has clearly marked an acceleration in the group's refocusing and the rollout of the strategic roadmap. Our good results have demonstrated the relevance of the operational model, and 2022 is a new milestone in the group's history, and we're addressing it in a stronger position with a great deal of ambition. The ambition that was written in our corporate purpose to become a reference, a benchmark for the responsible transformation of the Earth's mineral resources for living well together and to be the expected champion of metals for the energy transition. Thank you all for listening, and we're now available to answer your questions.
Good morning, Mrs. Bories. Good morning, Thomas. This is Alain William from ODDO. Could you discuss the delta in EBITDA between 2020 and 2021? What are you expecting from intrinsic growth? Do you have a kind of formal model for that? Secondly, regarding the divestment of Aubert & Duval, we have a multiple of 2x EBITDA, with prices that have changed since before the COVID crisis. Can you tell us more about the price paid? Finally, could you clarify your dividend policy? How should we interpret that 2.5 EUR per share?
Is that the base dividend? Is that likely to change based on payout policy?
Thank you, Alain, for that question. I'm gonna answer the first one, and then I'll let Thomas answer the two others. On your first question, we are continuing on our trend for intrinsic improvement from volume, from productivity increases, from what we've been doing, to improve the efficiency rate of the use of our equipment. I mentioned the figure. Over the last two years, we have EUR 450 million in total intrinsic improvement over 2020 and 2021. 2021 is likely to be about the same. Again, we're expecting intrinsic improvements again that are significant, we're continuing along the same trend at the same speed over the last years. It is becoming much harder, of course, because you start with the low-hanging fruit.
We do intend to continue to improve our operations in line with how we've been able to achieve it in the past. Thomas, for the next.
I hope you can hear me. Yes, the mic's on. Yes, on the valuation of Aubert & Duval, the transaction price, EUR 95 million enterprise value, that may seem rather low in respect of the revenue figure of about EUR 500 million of Aubert & Duval. Nevertheless, you need to bear in mind one thing is that A&D been consuming cash for several years now. This year will have consumed about EUR 125 million in cash. That's quite a significant number, and this year is set to continue to have a high cash burn rate.
As you probably noted on the part of the consortium, there is an investment plan that's significant that is planned, and so one can expect that the return to positive cash generation will not be immediate. An enterprise value of EUR 95 million, that gives a positive value for the shares, significantly positive. We considered that even that asset has record strategic value, an important place in the industry value chain. It was a good price for the divestment of A&D. On the dividend policy, you noted our capital allocation policy that we presented to you with three priorities. Number one priority, de-leveraging. Secondly, fund our growth CapEx. Thirdly, shareholder return, the payment of a dividend. Once we're able to satisfy the first two conditions, we can consider the third.
Our dividend policy at this stage is not more defined than that. The ratio, the payout ratio is 24% with EUR 2.5 per share. That's a prudent ratio, and so our intention is to be able to continue to regularly pay out dividends to our shareholders as long as we have been able to meet the first two conditions that are the first two priorities. I can't say any more than that today. We'll see if going forward, we can give greater clarity on the dividend policy.
Thanks for your answers.
Are there any other questions? Société Générale.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Can you hear me?
We can no longer hear you.
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Yes, we can hear you.
Can you hear me?
Okay. Yes, we can.
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Go ahead. Ask your question, please. We can hear you just fine. We can hear you.
Questions on Gabon. First, could you remind us what the timetable is for the discussion about royalties with the Gabonese state this year? Second question on Gabon is what benefit do you expect from the entry of Meridiam in the SETRAG with regard to the next couple of years? Two questions on Indonesia. First of all, can you remind us what is the energy feed of the smelter of Tsingshan that you're sharing? Also that HPAL technology you're looking at with BASF, is that the Tsingshan HPAL technology that you would be sharing? Finally, Erasteel is that going to be simpler to sell than Aubert & Duval has been, in your opinion? Thanks.
Thank you for those questions. Maybe starting with Gabon. Now, I'm not sure I fully understood your question because we don't really have much of a timetable on royalties. There's not a particular issue, so I'm not sure exactly what you're driving at, but we can get back to it. When it comes to our expectations from Meridiam, things are looking good. Until recently, we had 100% of the Trans-Gabon Railway. Trans-Gabon Railway does not just transport Comilog product, far from it. There are other users of the Trans-Gabonese line, other mining players, all of the wood operators, freight, passengers, et cetera. The Trans-Gabonese line requires a lot of investment to continue to grow.
As you saw over the last 3-4 years, we've been able to more than double the transport capacity of the line, and a lot of work has already been done. The infrastructure is funded in part by the state, but most of it, so 70% of that is being funded by SETRAG itself. The fact that we have Meridiam and also the Gabonese state that has bought a share in SETRAG and Comilog will have just a majority share, 51%. This better reflects the usage of the line by Comilog. This will provide money, also skills, because Comilog has a lot of skills in operating infrastructure elsewhere in Africa and elsewhere in Gabon. Now, we think this is an excellent thing to have partners on board with us.
We do want to maintain a majority stake through Comilog in SETRAG, as it is a vital transport line for us, for the mine, making sure that we can get the ore to the ocean, but we have no intention of keeping 100% of it. For Indonesia, as it stands, the energy that is being used for the Indonesian plant is coal. This is one of the challenges that we're facing. The fact that we have not decided to increase our capacity to move into other NPI tranches in Indonesia. The HPAL plant that we're planning is not a Tsingshan technology. Tsingshan does not have HPAL technology in the strictest sense. However, there is Chinese engineering firms building the HPAL plants in Indonesia.
We're currently working with Chinese engineering, which is not Tsingshan, but is a highly specialized Chinese firm in this kind of project. As a reminder, this is 51% Eramet and 49% BASF. On the topic of that project, we are working for energy supply to not be coal-based, so electricity to not be from coal plant. Your final question on Erasteel. Yes, Erasteel should be easier to sell than Aubert & Duval. It's smaller, and also Erasteel is on a positive trend, as you could see on our books and in our presentation. Erasteel was in the red for a very long time, but for a number of years now, 2 or 3 years, maybe, we have a restructuring product that's been rolled out. They really suffered from the drop-off in the automotive market in 2020.
Things are back in 2021. Market share is going up, production is going up, and we think that we're going to be in a good position to divest Erasteel in 2022.
Thank you. Just to clarify my question on Gabon. I mean, sometime in 2022, you're going to have to discuss with the government some payment of either dividends or royalties.
Mm.
With regards to the profits that you've made in Gabon. Is that right?
No, it's not royalties. It's dividend, but every year we distribute a payout, a dividend, where every year when we generate profits, we distribute dividends to Gabon. Thomas, would you like to answer that point to be more specific?
There's no royalties, but the Gabon state holds 29% of Comilog. When we pay out dividends, 29% of the dividends go to the Gabon state. Yes. No royalties in Gabon. Comilog is making money and Gabon pays taxes to the state as minority shareholder board. Significantly, on the board, every year, we discuss the dividend payment, and depending on the results, and generally the results are good, so we pay a significant dividend, and we receive a large part of that, and a share goes to the minorities.
As every year, we have this discussion without revealing beforehand what is going to be paid. Discussions always proceed well. There will be the payment of a dividend this year to Comilog.
Further questions?
No further questions on audio lines. We will continue with questions asked on the webcast.
Good morning. Questions from the webcast. Could you come back to the impact of the crisis between Russia and Ukraine? What is going to be the impact on nickel and manganese prices, according to you?
Well, if I knew what the impact was gonna be on nickel prices, I would be buying shares right now. Russia, not the Soviet Union, but Russia, sorry, but at least you can see where my mind's going. Russia today accounts for about 26% of worldwide nickel production, a significant part. If there were to be an embargo, then nickel supply around the world would suffer. That all being said, we're not too concerned because it's quite easy to work around, trade restrictions and things can be run through China.
There may be embargoes for Europe or Western countries, but nickel will probably find its way out and into the market. Although we are expecting tension on the nickel market, as I explained earlier, we're at just two weeks in inventory, which is very low. For the other impacts, there's the macroeconomic impact, of course. There's probably going to be an impact on manganese alloys as well, because especially Ukraine is a big producer of manganese alloy, especially silicomanganese, and if that producer were to no longer be able to produce or export product at the same levels that they have in the past, then that is going to cut off the European and Middle Eastern market from part of their manganese alloy supply.
That's likely to be good for us, though, if we are able to keep our production levels high, and is likely to drive prices up for manganese alloys as well. Probably an upside to be found there. It's also important to note that, Russia is a big producer of met coke and gets supply from our Norwegian plants in large part, and there may be issues with supply there.
We're not seeing any major impact on Eramet's books beyond the few components that I just mentioned, beyond the overall macroeconomic impact of the crisis on the world economy.
To keep on the topic of nickel, is the trade deficit due to strong demand in batteries or something else?
I explained this. That was on the slide deck. I think we need to wind back a few slides here. Here we go, right here. As you can see, the strong demand in 2021, up 17%, is due to Inox volume, which was very dynamic, so construction, automotive industry up 16%. You can also see that the battery market, which is about 200,000 tons, is now at 325,000 tons, and that's likely to continue to increase. Up 64%, accounting for 30% of the rise in demand. We're expecting batteries to be an ever-increasing part of demand for nickel. Especially if you look at LME stocks, which are pure nickel in the shape of bricks. They then get dissolved to make nickel sulfate for batteries.
This is Class 1 nickel, so not ferrous, ferronickel, but the pure nickel that's required for batteries, and that is where we're seeing a lot of tension on the LME stocks. As part of that, your 19,800 estimation for nickel prices that you're basing your 2022 guidance, is that maybe a little bit low?
When we drew up the guidance, this was the consensus across analysts. We take a market consensus. We don't just pull these figures out of thin air. We try to be as close as possible to market consensus. The market consensus at the time when we drew up the forecasts was this, and that's how we calculated our guidance. If you look at today's prices, they are significantly above what we used when we established our guidance. As to whether today's prices are gonna be sustainable and continue throughout the year, that's a question that's better put to you. I think it's up to each person to come up with their own forecast for nickel prices. You know our exposure. We have that in the press release and in the appendices with this presentation.
You should be able to calculate very quickly the impact of nickel prices on Eramet's books.
Moving to lithium, could you detail your lithium projects in France and outlook?
In France, we're working on geothermal lithium, and perhaps Philippe can tell us what the situation is with those projects. In France, geothermal lithium in the Alsace plain in eastern France and lithium that today is found in salts extracted by energy suppliers to recover heat. The idea of value creation is to use the novel process of Eramet when the lithium is on the surface to recover it before it's reinjected into the lower levels of the earth. In 2021, the world first, we commissioned a small scale pilot showing the feasibility of the Eramet lithium carbonate for battery quality from this source, and 2022 will be devoted to the economic case study.
Now, it's clear that this extraction of geothermal lithium is clearly capital intensive in terms of the resources available. It'll depend what we anticipate for lithium prices. With the price of lithium today, no problem, it's very profitable. If we take lower lithium prices, there could, of course, be issues regarding the economics of this type of project. Our process works, so we continue to work on it because there is every likelihood that the price of lithium will remain high for quite a while. Returning to nickel cobalt at Weda Bay, how will it be financed, and do you still have sufficient in-house skills to develop this innovative project? These are two separate questions. Financing, I'll hand over to Thomas, and then we can discuss the skills.
For financing the hydrometallurgy project at Weda Bay, it's still under study with our partner BASF, and we will of course ensure that we can raise appropriate funding for the project and reasonable in terms of our financial situation.
On the competencies, the skill sets, we have hydrometallurgy skills. We've worked a lot on these issues. We're working, of course, part of recycling because the recycling process, also hydrometallurgy process. BASF also has skills, expertise, clearly, so we're two players with expertise. They come from the other end of the chain from chemistry with hydrometallurgical expertise like we do, and we rely on engineering systems that have developed these with the HPALs that work in the world. The first HPALs built some 10, 15 years ago, had difficult startup.
The latest to be built were commissioned without difficulty and reached nominal output very quickly. There's a real experience curve that has been achieved on this technology, and we're quite confident with the available skills and expertise with the engineering company supporting us. We don't have any expertise issues. Regarding manganese alloys, you've sharply improved the mix this year. Will that continue? Well, it's clear that here we have a particularly high mix level compared to past history. It remains our goal, which is to maintain a high level of refined alloys. There's a real challenge here in terms of this mix level as compared to price and to market share, because we have a very high market share in refined alloys. We're far and away the leading world producer of refined manganese alloy production.
We have a big market share to increase, to grow. If the market isn't growing, it's difficult. It'll all depend on market dynamics.
Two more financial questions. Could you come back to those EUR 340 million impact of the divestment of Aubert & Duval and what's behind that figure? And on dividend, is a option to be paid in shares considered?
Thomas?
Thank you for the question. On the breakdown of those EUR 340 million, there are three different underlying components. The first value is the divestment write-off, so debt and some provisions. The securities end up being less valuable than they were in our books. Secondly, there was a depreciation of a number of Aubert & Duval assets, given the outlook for 2022 for Aubert & Duval. Then thirdly, we also provided guarantees to the purchaser. This means that we have some financial provisions to prepare for those guarantees.
Then on dividend in shares, no, we're not expecting to pay out any dividend in shares.
Thank you. Regarding the potential divestment of Erasteel, do you have any buyers lined up? Have you identified any, and what kind of industrial profile do they have?
Right now, we're preparing to implement the process. We haven't pulled the trigger in any way. We don't have any buyers lined up. We don't have any prospects. Of course, we've thought about who might be interested, and the range is relatively wide. Industrial players and financial players are involved. We think that there could be quite a wide variety in potential buyers. Some people have already expressed interest.
Thank you. Final question from me. 2021 is an exceptional year with a very ambitious roadmap behind it.
What are the main risks that you can see as you roll out that roadmap?
Well, look, as it stands, our balance sheet is much stronger. We've got some large upcoming projects as well that will need to be financed. That's going to be one of the challenges, even though today, if we're moving into ramping up these projects, is because we believe that our free cash flow generation is good enough to allow us to be much more aggressive in our growth projects and should enable us to raise the necessary funds. Quite clearly, we have some big greenfield projects ahead of us, which need to be delivered on time and on budget. Given the business and supply environment, that isn't easy. We've got issues with freight. We've got a lot of suppliers that are struggling getting their own inputs.
Building up projects right now, given the issues and concerns that we have on a lot of key inputs, is not necessarily the easiest thing in the world. We are being particularly attentive to the timeline for our projects given these supply issues.
Thank you very much. We have no further questions on the webcast.
In that case, thank you very much, everyone, for joining us and for asking your questions. We will be very happy to see some of you once again for the upcoming meetings in the next few days. Of course, we have our investor relations department that is available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much and have a great day.