Letter from the Executive Board
Dear Aurubis shareholders and
friends of the company,
We deliver! Aurubis is consistently executing investment projects, expanding its role as a market leader, and reaping the rewards of its growth agenda. At the same time, we’re capitalizing on the defining megatrends of our time: Electrification, AI and data centers, as well as energy infrastructure and security are all driving global demand for the strategic industrial and precious metals we produce to unprecedented heights. With our revised strategy, ‘Aurubis Performance 2030 — Forging resilience. Leading in multimetal.’, we aim to further expand our position as a global multimetal leader. We also strive to set new benchmarks in sustainable business practices, operational efficiency, and continuous innovation — creating lasting value for all our stakeholders.
We successfully achieved our 2024/25 fiscal year targets: We generated an operating EBT of €355 million (previous year: €413 million), which comfortably falls into the €330 to 370 million forecast range we sharpened over the course of the fiscal year. The main drivers shaping earnings development year-over-year were a considerably higher metal result, a significant jump in revenues from sulfuric acid, and robust demand for copper products. Opposing effects included lower concentrate throughput with reduced treatment and refining charges, a slight drop in revenues from recycling, and the anticipated higher ramp-up costs and depreciation from strategic projects. Net cash flow reached €677 million, significantly surpassing the previous year (€537 million). Operating ROCE was 8.8 % as at September 30, 2025 (previous year: 11.5 %) due in part to higher investment in strategic projects.
And while financial strength matters, safety and security are and will remain our highest priorities. We are pursuing a clear vision: zero work-related accidents and maximum plant security. In the 2024/25 fiscal year, we honed our security routines, intensified training, and rolled out technical solutions — from intelligent access control and perimeter monitoring to automated sample preparation and massively increased physical security protocols, including the construction of a new precious metals processing plant by the end of the 2026/27 fiscal year. We’ve also deployed drones equipped with infrared cameras to monitor site boundaries in Hamburg and continue to strengthen workforce awareness. We’ve already made great strides in realizing work safety improvements in Hamburg, and these enhancements will be increasingly rolled out across all Aurubis sites in the current fiscal year. This will deeply reinforce prevention, responsiveness and our safety culture.
Our employees are our most valuable element. That’s why we’re dedicating significant effort to advancing our company culture through the Power for Performance culture initiative with a clear focus on performance coupled with elements like feedback, teamwork and a constructive error culture. This reinforces our organizational strength, safety and security, and the trust of our shareholders.
Our guiding principle is to extract more metals more efficiently. And we’re investing accordingly. By the end of September 2025, we had already deployed over 75 % of our current €1.7 billion investment program for strategic projects. Looking ahead, we’ll be turning our sights more to optimization: We plan to increase throughput and maximize quality and service levels to generate sustainable cash flows.
The start of gradual commissioning of phase one of our flagship Aurubis Richmond project in the US marked a major milestone in the past fiscal year. As the first secondary smelter for complex multimetal recycling materials in the US, it puts us in an ideal starting position, which we will leverage for our continued benefit. Once phase two is completed and ramped up, the plant will process around 180,000 t of complex recycling materials a year, and we anticipate an around €170 million annual contribution to EBITDA starting in the 2028/29 fiscal year. We’re also exploring expansion options in the US, a market with enormous potential. It requires around 2 million t of copper a year, and currently relies on imports to cover roughly half that need.
Europe remains a highly attractive market for Aurubis, and the majority of our strategic investment, around €1 billion, continues to flow into this core market. Last year, we inaugurated an innovative recycling plant in Beerse that is achieving exceptional recovery rates and extracting more precious metals, lead and tin from complex anode slimes. At the end of 2024, a facility at the Olen site came online to improve the processing of electrolyte, or bleed, from the tankhouse to recover more copper and nickel. We’re planning to commission a cutting-edge recycling plant in Hamburg in the first half of fiscal year 2025/26. Developed in-house, this highly innovative process will enable us to handle around 30,000 more tons of external recycling material per year, along with substantial volumes of internal intermediates. We also expect the expanded tankhouse in Bulgaria to ramp up production in the 2025/26 fiscal year, adding 120,000 t of copper cathodes to annual production and securing supply for European industry.
Together, these strategic investments will enhance the power of our unique smelter network, enabling us to expand our position as a leading Western multimetal producer. They all contribute to our revised strategy, ‘Aurubis Performance 2030 — Forging resilience. Leading multimetal.’, which refines targeted investments along with other areas of our operations.
These include strengthening our commercial activities by expanding our procurement reach, especially beyond Europe, establishing many more closing-the-loop partnerships, and building a competitive edge with tailored services — such as faster, automated sampling and transparent, digital processing. This enhances our resilience and attractiveness to suppliers and customers, particularly in a tight recycling material market.
Every site in our diversified smelter network has individual processing capabilities, which we continually expand. This creates opportunities for additional efficiency gains within Aurubis as material streams evolve. We are enhancing stability, throughput and quality with targeted debottlenecking and digital process optimization. By leveraging innovative solutions, we’re advancing our ability to process highly complex, and as such economically highly attractive, input materials.
Looking ahead, we’re targeting additional growth beyond our current investment landscape, with a sharper focus, growing where we lead to strengthen our multimetal portfolio. Geographically, two extremely attractive markets are the priority: Europe and the US. In the US in particular, our newest site creates ideal conditions for capitalizing on current market dynamics. This is how we are profiting from the megatrends of the future.
Aurubis is exceptionally well positioned, and the outlook for demand for our metals is more promising than ever. The market environment won’t come without challenges, though, especially for raw materials. Right now, global copper mine capacity expansion is not keeping pace with the rapid build-up of Asian smelters, temporarily constricting the markets. Recycling markets are not immune, and the secondary market is increasingly the focus of global players looking to meet surging demand for copper and other metals. Growing geopolitical uncertainty is a third factor. Emerging economies like China and India in particular are significantly expanding their influence on raw material markets, reshaping global trade and supply chains. This dynamic is very real. But we’ve done our homework. With our revised strategy, we’re ready to address these challenges effectively. Our business model is resilient and built on multiple diversified earnings drivers and competitive USPs.
Such as our sustainability leadership. We’re proving that economic success, environmental protection, and responsible supply chains can go hand in hand. Key projects like our solar park in Bulgaria, the high share of green electricity powering our operations in Belgium, and our considerable upfront investments in energy sources like hydrogen clearly show that as an industry we are part of the solution. Today, we lead globally with a CO2 footprint for copper that is already over 60 % below the global average for all copper smelters. Copper Mark certifications that cover nearly our entire network underscore our commitment to responsibility and audited ESG standards throughout the value chain — and make us the preferred choice for many business partners.
Our strong financial position is another area in which we lead. We’re implementing additional internal efficiency measures to reinforce this strength, prepare for market headwinds, and improve profitability and cash flow. Our medium-term goal is to improve our cost profile by €50 million and reduce required working capital by around €500 million. For fiscal year 2025/26, we’re forecasting an operating EBT in the range of €300 million to €400 million, despite continued tight raw material markets, and operating ROCE between 7 % and 9 %. The latter will continue to be shaped by our high investment in strategic projects in the current fiscal year. At the same time, our focus remains on strengthening our cash flow profile to ensure our shareholders continue to enjoy attractive participation in the company’s success. We revised our dividend policy and are targeting 30 % of the operating consolidated net result as a dividend for the current 2025/26 fiscal year. We have a strong balance sheet and are very well equipped to capture future growth opportunities.
We are ready to meet the ‘decade of metals’ head-on. We’re targeting the right markets, and positioning our metals exactly where growth will emerge tomorrow. Our integrated structure, multimetal expertise, and smelter network give us unique competitive advantages. We see additional attractive growth opportunities ahead, especially through our market presence in the US.
A heartfelt thank you goes to our over 7,000 colleagues worldwide, our business partners, and you, our shareholders. Your support and trust are both our motivation and our responsibility. Together, we are making Aurubis stronger — safer, more efficient, and better — every day.
Dr. Toralf Haag Steffen Alexander Hoffmann Inge Hofkens Tim Kurth
The fiscal year in 160 seconds:
You can find Executive Board member CVs here.