The Bonpertuis plant didn’t fall victim to anti-Russia sanctions, but to the broader slump in Europe’s steel sector — a squeeze that has left smaller mills unable to absorb soaring costs or finance the large-scale investments required to stay competitive.
Russian outlets are circulating claims that one of France’s oldest factories has shuttered its doors because it “couldn’t survive the fallout from Western sanctions and anti-Russia policies.”
This long-running disinformation trope — that Western sanctions “hurt Europeans more than Russia” — is designed to undercut Europe’s sanctions policy. In practice, none of the French outlets covering the factory’s bankruptcy identified anti-Russia sanctions as the primary or even a meaningful cause of its liquidation. Notably, that allegation appears only in Russian sourcing.
The shutdown of Aciéries de Bonpertuis — the Bonpertuis steelworks owned by the FORLAM Group — stemmed from structural weaknesses in France’s steel sector and investment demands the company could no longer meet. As Journal de l’Économie noted, “In 2023, Bonpertuis’ financial reports showed a drop in turnover from €25.3 million to €20.3 million, and a loss of €2 million. Such a decline is typical for medium-sized steel plants caught between Europe’s steel giants and Asian manufacturers. Fixed costs — energy, maintenance, environmental fees — keep rising, while demand for long and drawn steel products remains unstable.”
The plant faced more than €5 million in required upgrades to modernize its electric furnace — a price tag management ultimately deemed “unbearable.” That assessment culminated in the decision to liquidate the facility in October 2025.
StopFake has previously dismantled similar narratives, including fabricated claims that Germany had conceded Western sanctions on Russia were “ineffective,” or that Ursula von der Leyen had blamed global food inflation on “the conflict in Ukraine.”
