At La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin in the Loiret, the atmosphere is not festive. A large part of the 250 employees of the Duralex glassworks will be put on partial unemployment from November 1. The reason ? Soaring energy prices that weigh down the company. “The cost of energy represents 40% of our turnover, it is impossible to continue producing”, explains José-Luis Llacuna to France Info. The glassworks has therefore chosen to suspend the activity of its furnaces in order to hope to survive and get through the winter of 2022. The decision to put production on standby has been imitated by several industrial groups weakened by the sharply rising cost of electricity. and more generally energy.
Another heavyweight in French glass is anticipating a difficult winter. Arc International has taken an even more drastic decision by laying off, two days a week, a third of its employees, i.e. 1,600 of its 4,600 employees. Putting the industrial apparatus on standby makes it possible to limit the losses generated today by the start-up of production lines.
The French steel group Ascometal has also chosen to reduce the airfoil on its industrial sites in Fos-sur-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône) and Hagondange (Moselle). On Wednesday, management announced to the unions two production interruptions of three weeks each in November and December. The shutdown will inevitably have repercussions both on the group’s 300 subcontractors but more directly on the rest of the production chain. Part of the 1,200 employees could be placed on partial unemployment.
“The prices of electricity on the markets are currently so stratospheric that we have no other choice, explains the director of the Fos-sur-Mer plant, Hervé Hansen to Le Parisien. Normally, in the month of “August, we pay our electricity 50 euros per megawatt hour (MVh). There, it exceeds 850 euros. Even if the customers have paid their orders, we will not have the necessary cash to finance production.” On the Hervé Hansen site, the electricity budget has increased from 8 million euros this year to 80 million euros in anticipation of 2023. The metal industry is particularly energy-intensive.
At the end of a Defense Council under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron to take stock of the supply of gas and electricity and examine the scenarios in order to avoid shortages, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the Minister of Energy Transition, said on Friday that France could “avoid restrictive measures” thanks to “sobriety and European solidarity”.
