Making and selling shoes in France is a challenge. It is all the greater since the price of electricity is soaring, alarmed Marjorie Pennec, the director of the TBS plant in Jarzé (Maine-et-Loire), in front of the operators of an injection carousel of soles. This monumental machine makes it possible to mold a polyurethane sole and attach it to the leather upper of TBS shoes. Its temperature reaches 230°C.
The TBS carousel runs sixteen hours a day. And in winter, the factory must maintain an ambient temperature of more than 16°C to prevent the raw materials from congealing, and to ensure correct working conditions for the 70 employees. The brand’s parent company, the Eram group, has already taken measures to reduce the amount: the use of LEDs for lighting has been generalized, and heating in meeting rooms has been reduced.
But, already, in two years, the energy bill has increased by 250%. In 2022 alone, the cost jumped 61%. The group, which also operates a factory in Montjean-sur-Loire (Maine-et-Loire) in particular for its Bocage and Mellow Yellow brands, expects to pay an additional 5 million euros in 2022 for its energy costs.
“It’s not sustainable”
In Guidel (Morbihan), the manufacturer of Le Minor sweaters and marinières has cut the heating in the room of the knitting machines and looms, which run in automatic mode. And he kept it in the sewing machine workshop, where the operators make the T-shirts and sweaters, check them and put them in bags. But this saving measure will not be enough to sufficiently reduce the electricity bill in 2023.
Its amount could reach 135,000 euros, “4.5 times that of 2022, which was already up 20%”, alarmed Jérôme Permingeat, co-director. The Breton brand, whose turnover reached 4 million euros in 2021, risks seeing its net profit reduced to almost nil in 2023, when this invoice is paid. However, the company, which employs 71 employees, is in full revival. “It’s very worrying”laments Mr. Permingeat.
At Coteau, near Roanne (Loire), the soaring price of electricity, combined with that of gas, threatens the company Tinctures and Primers Danjoux (TAD), whose dyeing, washing and drying machines run twenty-four hours out of twenty-four to polymerize tissue. In 2023, the gas bill could reach 2.5 million euros, when that of electricity would reach 1.4 million. That is, in total, the equivalent of 36% of turnover. “It’s not sustainable”is alarmed Jean-Louis Danjoux, its managing director.
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