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Aurubis has again fallen victim to criminals. They are said to have cheated the copper group out of precious metals such as gold. The damage is more than a hundred million euros. That’s the background.
Europe’s largest copper smelter, Aurubis, has fallen victim to criminals – again. The full extent of the damage is not yet known. The Hamburg company only said so much: The company has strong indications of a shortage of metals. At present, it cannot be ruled out that damage in the “low three-digit” million range has occurred.
One of the biggest gold producers Europe
But it’s obviously not just about copper. “It cannot currently be ruled out that precious metals are also part of the fraud,” explains Christoph Tesch, Head of Corporate Communications at Aurubis tagesschau.de. The assumed extent of the damage alone indicates this: “It would be difficult to come up with such an amount using only copper,” says Tesch.
What many people don’t know is that precious metals are a by-product of copper production, and Aurubis is also active in the recycling business. The Hamburg group not only produces copper, but numerous other industrial metals such as tin and lead, as well as precious metals such as gold and silver. With 50 tons of gold per year, Aurubis claims to be one of the largest gold producers in Europe.
Aurubis spokesman: “The metal was never there”
“But you shouldn’t imagine that thieves carried the metals from the factory premises here,” emphasizes Tesch in an interview tagesschau.de. “The metal wasn’t taken out of the factory – it was never there. So we’re talking fraud here.” A supplier was paid for material that never arrived at the Hamburg plant.
In practice, the whole procedure usually looks like this: Aurubis takes samples from the materials delivered by the supplier, examines them and then triggers a payment to the supplier – based on the metal content determined in the sample. There are four weeks in the production process between taking the sample and extracting the copper; for precious metals it can be up to eight weeks.
Two cases within a few months
The fraud was noticed when the metal inventory was checked, and “significant deviations from the target inventory as well as deviations from special samples of certain deliveries of input materials in the recycling area were found,” as stated in the stock exchange notification. The company assumes that it has become the object of criminal activity again. The State Criminal Police Office was turned on.
Only in June did it become known that a gang of thieves at Aurubis had stolen several tons of by-products from copper production containing precious metals from the company premises over the years. At that time, the public prosecutor’s office had searched the workplaces of employees and external companies at the Hamburg location and was able to confiscate assets from possible criminal offenses worth more than 20 million euros.
Is there a connection between the perpetrators then and now? “It is part of the ongoing investigation whether the two cases are related,” explains Aurubis spokesman Tesch.
Aurubis share collapses in double digits
In order to determine the full extent of the damage, Aurubis has now started an extraordinary inventory of the metal inventories. The result should be available by the end of the month. But one thing is already clear: Aurubis will not be able to meet its target of an operating pre-tax result of EUR 450 to 500 million for the current fiscal year 2022/2023. The group has cashed in on its forecast – and is thus also causing difficulties for the Salzgitter steel group.
Because Salzgitter AG holds a 30 percent stake in Aurubis. Against this background, the SDAX company is also forced to cancel its forecast. The reaction of the stock market to the new developments at Aurubis and Salzgitter is as prompt as it is violent. The Aurubis share listed in the MDAX collapsed by up to 18.3 percent to EUR 62.50 – the lowest level since last November.
The Salzgitter share loses up to 7.3 percent, but can limit its losses in the course of trading. In any case, the damage at Aurubis also poses risks for Salzgitter, warns analyst Moses Ola from Bank JPMorgan.