In Dordogne, the period of wars and rearmament revives the century-old powder mill of Bergerac | EUROtoday

Five years in the past, no Bergerac resident would have wager 1 euro on the revival of the powder manufacturing unit created in 1915 to provide the artillery of the Great War. The metropolis’s 26,000 inhabitants will not be very happy with it, nevertheless it has been this manner for greater than a century: the financial and demographic well being of their territory is punctuated by the sound of the cannon. Flourishing when shells rain on the battlefields of the planet. Depressed when the weapons fall silent.

Today, the rearmament decreed by France, in opposition to a backdrop of the sound of shoes within the coronary heart of Europe, is giving shade to the quiet sub-prefecture of Dordogne. It is even a boon for the territory, rural and impoverished, the place the month-to-month revenue of tax households barely reaches 1,936 euros, or 700 euros lower than the nationwide common.

In 2007, the corporate Eurenco, 100% owned by the State, inheritor to the National Company of Powders and Explosives, nearly went out of enterprise. Due to a scarcity of orders, most manufacturing stopped. Direction the group’s Swedish subsidiary. All that remained in Périgord had been the modular expenses, these spherical instances which, as soon as full of powder, propel the massive caliber shells fired by the 155 millimeter cannons, such because the Caesar, manufactured by France. There additionally remained a 170 hectare plot of land categorized as “Seveso high threshold”, certainly one of these industrial websites the place massive portions of harmful substances might be dealt with.

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