Metlen has signed the first major commercial contract for European-produced gallium, a critical metal China still dominates. Gallium is not a rare-earth element, but it sits in the same strategic basket — semiconductors, AI hardware, telecoms, defense electronics, solar cells and parts of the EV supply chain.
Greece, long a bauxite and aluminium producer, is now trying to turn a by-product of that industry into a geopolitical asset.
Metlen has agreed to supply about 25% of the annual output from its new gallium unit at the Aluminium of Greece complex in Agios Nikolaos/Aspra Spitia, Viotia. That is 12.5 tonnes of an expected 50 tonnes a year. The buyer is described only as a top-five U.S. gallium consumer. The terms are confidential.
Deliveries start in 2027 and are meant to reach full contracted volume in 2028.
It is the first significant commercial gallium offtake between a European producer and a leading American technology company. The project is listed as a Strategic Project under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act and has EIB backing under REPowerEU. Investment in the wider bauxite–alumina–gallium program has been estimated at €295–340 million.
Metlen presents itself as the first company in Europe to build integrated gallium production and the first to lock in a commercial contract for metal made on the continent.
Gallium melts at 29.76°C — warm enough to liquefy in a human hand. That physical quirk is less important than its industrial one: it is a key ingredient in compound semiconductors (GaAs, GaN) used in smartphones, 5G/6G, power electronics, LEDs, photovoltaics and some battery and defense systems.
Global gallium output is highly concentrated. China has long controlled the bulk of refined supply, much as it controls most rare-earth refining and almost all permanent-magnet production. When Beijing tightened export controls on rare earths and related materials in 2025, European and U.S. factories felt the shock immediately.
Officials now treat gallium, germanium, graphite, magnesium and the rare earths as a single problem: Europe has deposits and some mining, but too little midstream processing.
The Critical Raw Materials Act set 2030 targets (10% of strategic materials mined in the EU, 40% processed, 25% recycled). Industry and auditors say those numbers are slipping. Washington has moved faster with equity stakes, price floors and offtake deals.
Batteries and EVs sit at the center of the political story even when the specific metal is gallium rather than neodymium or lithium. Europe’s auto and electronics industries cannot electrify or digitize if every high-purity intermediate still has to pass through China.
Greece is also home to Eldorado’s Skouries copper-gold project in Halkidiki, Thrace Minerals at Sapes, germanium potential at Molaoi, and there are further bids under the CRMA list. Metlen’s gallium unit is the one that has already moved from R&D at the historic aluminium plant to pilot packages and a signed offtake.
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