The Poulain manufacturing unit in Villebarou threatened by imminent closure | EUROtoday

More than 170 years after its creation, the Poulain manufacturing unit positioned in Villebarou, close to Blois (Loir-et-Cher), is focused by a closure plan which shall be introduced on June 13 throughout a social and financial committee (CSE ) extraordinary, we discovered on Friday June 7 from a union supply and administration.

Summoned on Wednesday by their administration, the unions discovered throughout this assembly the upcoming CSE agenda, specifically “the closure of the Blois site”specified to Agence France-Presse Tony Anjoran, union delegate of the CGT inside Poulain, confirming info from The New Republic.

This announcement took the 109 staff of the manufacturing unit without warning, in response to the unionist, who affirms that “volumes have been declining for a year, but not enough to endanger the company”.

In 2023, the positioning had stopped the manufacturing of chocolate powders for overseas, or 18% of its manufacturing, in response to The New Republic. Furthermore, in 2022, the manufacturing unit had benefited from state support of 200,000 euros, once more in response to the Touraine media.

“Negotiate exit conditions as best as possible from a social point of view”

“None of the efforts made to find an industrial solution likely to sustain the activity of the site” didn’t succeed, defined for its half the administration, for which the CSE of June 13 “will allow us to share information with a view to consulting staff representative bodies on the economic reasons for this project, its impacts, support for employees and the search for buyers”.

“We have it in our throats, because they could also have waited a few months and chosen to sell the site”lamented Mr. Anjoran, earlier than declaring “disgusted” to see it shut “a company with more than a century of history”. From now on, for the CGT, one goal stays: “negotiate the exit conditions as best as possible from a social point of view” for workers of the corporate based in 1848 by Victor-Auguste Poulain.

For its half, administration ensured its “determination to support each of the 109 employees concerned towards a new job”who shall be “at the heart of the project” introduced on June 13.

Since 2017, the Poulain chocolate model has been owned by the Carambar & Co group, created after the acquisition by the funding firm Eurazeo of a number of French confectionery manufacturers from the American multinational Mondelez.