It was a key step on the path to saving Valdunes, but there will still be pitfalls to overcome. Europlasma had until Wednesday January 31 to inform the receiver of the northern company if it was submitting an offer for the two sites: the Leffrinckoucke forge, near Dunkirk, and the Trith-Saint-Léger factory. in Valenciennes.
The day before the deadline, Jérôme Garnache-Creuillot, the CEO of Europlasma, came to visit the factory and meet the employees. Wednesday evening, so at the very last moment, it’s by e-mail “Arrived around 8:30 p.m. when we learned that he was positioned on both sites”relates Maxime Savaux, CGT delegate from the Trith-Saint-Léger factory. “We went to tour the workshops this Thursday morning to inform the employees. Obviously, social problems were at the heart of the discussions. It was complicated, some wanted to walk out, but we managed to restore calm. » Because, if Europlasma’s offer opens the door to the survival of the sector and to a future for the only French manufacturer of wheels and axles for the railway, it plans to keep only 175 employees out of the 310 that have both sites. “And it is undoubtedly at Trith-Saint-Léger that they will be eliminated”predicts Maxime Savaux, “because with the erosion of staff over the past five years at Leffrinckoucke, it is impossible to remove any more staff to ensure production”.
When the Gironde group Eurosplasma, specializing in the treatment and recovery of hazardous waste, came forward at the beginning of January, it only expressed its interest in the Leffrinckoucke forge. However, since MA Steel, the Chinese shareholder of Valdunes, let go in May, and the company went into receivership on November 20, all observers of this emblematic issue of French reindustrialization agreed that only a takeover of the two sites could give Valdunes a future. Their destinies are linked: forging wheels on the Dunkirk coast, then machining and heat treatment in Trith-Saint-Léger to produce the finished product.
Producing “green wheels”
Bercy, which has been following the matter closely for weeks, sees in this offer the hope of “maintain the sector”but now we need to take a closer look, because “questions arise around the financing of public authorities”. Europlasma estimates its investment capacity in Valdunes at 23 million euros over three years, while the figures circulating were around 65 million to reach a production capacity of 80,000 wheels per year (compared to 30,000 currently).
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