ReportingFragments of France | Eight years ago, the factory in this small Alsatian town was threatened with closure. It was able to relaunch itself and now relies on flax, which no one was spinning in France any longer.
Dark mine under a Plexiglas window, this is an old photo of Arnaud Montebourg welcoming visitors at the entrance to the workshops of the Emanuel Lang textile factory in Hirsingue (Haut-Rhin). The former minister of François Hollande, today an unlabeled presidential candidate, came in 2013 to support the employees who were fighting against the closure of the site. Pinned to panels, the press clippings of the time recall that the tall brick fireplace, the town’s totem since 1908, almost disappeared. Saved in extremis from liquidation, the company has restarted around a core of four employees. They are now thirty-four.
In September, the SME is recovering from its last pitfall. On May 8, she escaped the worst. An accidental fire caused half of its fleet of 33 looms to go up in smoke. Covered in ash, the other half is badly damaged. “Within an hour, we lost all the weaving”, Christian Didier, the general manager, is still afraid of Christian Didier, wearing a salt and pepper beard on a “house” fabric shirt, as he walks through the oversized workshops. In the last century, the factory employed up to 1,000 workers on hundreds of looms.
At the end of the building, the dislocated and charred silhouettes of a dozen Dorniers, the “Rolls” of the German-made loom, bear witness to the scale of the disaster. In a Mad Max setting, Charles Kocer, foreman, bones the seriously injured down to their cogs. “It’s the hospital here”, he says, writhing around a burnt electrical circuit. In the next room, the walls are struggling to mitigate the tremors of the machines that have already resumed service. Nineteen automated steel monsters intertwine weft and warp threads to make the shirt fabrics for which Emanuel Lang is famous.
Three weeks of shutdown and damage estimated at 1 million euros when the turnover is barely three times could have stopped the rebirth of the SME. If it hadn’t been for this phone call: “What can we do to help you?” ” At the other end of France, from Bordeaux, the online men’s ready-to-wear brand Asphalte is offering to launch a fund of support for its supplier. Other committed SMEs and champions of “made in France” (Réuni, Le Slip français, 1083, Atelier Loden, Païsan, Bonne Gueule, etc.), also clients of Emanuel Lang, are taking over the call. In a few days, 60,000 euros were collected – donations from individuals for the most part – which made it possible to finance the purchase of two second-hand trades. Enough to restart production while waiting for insurance compensation and the 300,000 euros of aid released by the region.
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