The General Council of the Banque de France, equivalent to the board of directors, has “validated the project” to build a new banknote factory in Vic-le-Comte (Puy-de-Dôme), the bank’s general director of means of payment Erik Lacourrège told AFP on Friday.
The decision of the General Council was to validate the project, in itself it is very good news, welcomed Mr. Lacourrge in a telephone interview.
The construction of a new banknote printing plant, which has been postponed several times, was suspended until the unions accepted a competitiveness plan providing for the reduction from 4 to 3 of the number of agents around certain machines on the new site.
The signing of an agreement this week by the CGT Banque de France paves the way for the implementation of Refondation, the name given to the new factory project, indicates a press release from the central bank sent in parallel, at the end of the meeting.
Act last summer, the construction of the new printing works some 30 kilometers from the current printing works of Chamalires (Puy-de-Dme) and next to the current stationery of the central bank had been called into question after a social conflict started on December 2 last.
The General Council of the bank hailed with satisfaction the success of these negotiations and the involvement of the social partners in achieving this promising result, the press release states.
We are giving ourselves the next two months to prepare for the implementation phase of the project before the start as such of the construction of the plant, specified Mr. Lacourrge.
The successive delays of this new printing project have also increased the bill more than 250 million euros, against around 200 million euros in the estimate at the end of 2016.
This massive investment for the bank should allow banknotes to be manufactured at the best cost, according to her.
Eventually, France should have the most modern, efficient and ecological banknote production center in Europe, she continues.
The Banque de France’s printing works has been in operation since 1917 in Chamalires, near Clermont-Ferrand, a site which has reached its limits of evolution, specifies the Banque de France on its website.
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