Is deindustrialization over? The executive wants to believe it. During his televised address on Monday April 17, Emmanuel Macron particularly insisted on his economic record. “It is through reindustrialisation that we will regain our strength and that we will create better paid jobs”, assured the President of the Republic, continuing: “In France, in valleys and cantons, factories are opening again: 200 for two years.” The good news is echoed in the arguments of the representatives of the presidential majority, such as MP Karl Olive, who, on the set of CNewson April 20, assured: “We have suffered for twenty years from having impoverished this country, because there was not enough industrialization. Today, you have a maximum of companies which come to establish themselves in the country.”
The French industrial decline no longer needs to be demonstrated. In France, the number of jobs in the sector plummeted from 5.5 million to 3.8 million between 1978 and 2003. Last year, 3.2 million people worked in the industry, according to INSEE figures, or only 12% of total employees. An increase has nevertheless been perceptible in recent months: according to figures sent to L’Express by the General Directorate of Enterprises, in Bercy, “80,000 industrial jobs have been recreated in two years and 200 factories, opened over the last two years “. The statement of the President of the Republic on these new sites takes up the analysis of Trendeo, a firm specializing in employment and investment which has been monitoring industrial activity since 2009.
serial ads
According to data that Trendeo transmitted to L’Express, 182 factories were created in 2021 and 150 in 2022. Figures from which must be subtracted the 129 sites closed over the same period, to reach 203. In total, 10,961 jobs “nines” were created through these factories. A positive evolution, even if the trend seems to slow down between the two years. It does not manage either for the moment to stop the tumble of industrial employment in France. Since 2009, 48,263 jobs from the industry have been wiped off the map. Above all, the report does not always materialize factories that have emerged from the ground at the time of writing these lines. “These data are very reliable, but they are based on announcements made by companies. The reality can therefore vary marginally, notes Catherine Mercier-Suissa, lecturer in economics at the IAE in Lyon. If a company has difficulties, it can in particular revise the number of jobs downwards – or vice versa. For example, the Spanish company Vicky Foods announced in May 2021 the opening of a factory in Burgundy, planning to hire 240 employees. The first stone has barely laid last month.
These 200 factories open – or about to be – however provide information on the most promising sectors. “Today’s major projects are gathered around the production of batteries, semiconductors, or even electric vehicles”, observes David Cousquer, founder and manager of Trendeo. The biggest creations of sites – of a thousand posts each – appear in these domains. Three of them are in Hauts-de-France. In June 2021, the Chinese group Envision announced the installation of a battery factory in Douai (North). This gigafactory represents an investment of nearly 2 billion euros, with 1,200 jobs announced – and 2,500 projected by 2030.
In February 2022, the Grenoble start-up Verkor announced the opening ofa factory in Dunkirk (North) bringing together 1,200 jobs to develop “low carbon battery cells”. Finally, the Franco-Italian STMicroelectronics and the American GlobalFoundries declared in July 2022 that they wanted to open a semiconductor production plant in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (1,000 jobs), when the French Alteo and the Japanese Wscope indicated last October their intention to open a site (1,000 jobs) in Hauts-de-France.
Site extensions
Behind these announcements are nested other, smaller factories. About sixty sites should have between 100 and 450 employees. The rest of the industrial jobs announced in recent years are gathered in factories with less than a hundred employees. “New factories are only a very small minority in industrial job creation, specifies David Cousquer, of Trendeo. The bulk of job creation comes from extensions of existing sites. It corresponds to the addition of a team of night on automotive sites, changing from a 2×8 to 3×8 pace, buying a machine installed in a new building, etc.” To speak of “200 new factories” is therefore an affirmation which, in the mouth of the President of the Republic, is slightly lacking in context. The “new factories” as new entities, represent 1 out of 5 creations. The rest correspond to extensions of existing sites.
In terms of jobs and investments, the Hauts-de-France region is by far the one where reindustrialization seems the most important, followed by Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, or still Pays de la Loire. In addition to the electric battery sector, which concentrates a good part of the industrial effort, the new factories in the territory concentrate on the production of computer equipment. In October 2021, the French group Actia announced that it was strengthening its site in Colomiers (Haute-Garonne) by more than a hundred jobs. Many electrical equipment production plants are also due to open, such as the one announced by Voltec Solar in Bas-Rhin. The food industry is not to be outdone, with the installation of a Belgian Ecofrost factory in the Somme.
A low number of relocations
Relocations are also to be counted. According to the minutes of the Council of Ministers of March 22, 2023, 49 were recorded in 2022. The best result since 2009. Since the start of the five-year term, “we have relocated to our territory more than 700 productions which had left it, from paracetamol to Aigle boots”, it is underlined, to the General Directorate of Enterprises, in Bercy, before adding that, by the end of the year, “50% of the models of children’s boots will be produced in the Ingrandes factory”, in Vienne . Regarding paracetamol, the project has not yet been completed. Seqens, the French company which supplies the molecule for a third of the world market – by producing it in China – had announced the opening of its factory in Isère for 2023. It should finally be in 2024. Its first deliveries will not be materialize before 2025 or even 2026.
The proof that these relocation projects remain difficult to carry out. “It is still a minority movement, estimates Anaïs Voy-Gillis, doctor in geography, specialist in French and European industrial questions. This process will be very long, because concentrations have now taken place in certain countries. ‘entire assemblages were created elsewhere.’ Relocations represent a drop of water in the dynamics of French reindustrialisation: Trendeo counts 800 relocated jobs, or only 1.5% of all job creations in the sector. In the case of paracetamol, the last French factory, Rhodia, closed in 2008, while all production was relocated abroad. The era was then still in the movement of deindustrialization and relocation started in the 1980s.
The electroshock of the Covid
A recovery began in 2016, but it was above all the Covid crisis that acted as an electroshock. “For consumers and businesses alike, the big lesson has been that we should no longer be 100% dependent on our Chinese suppliers, notes Catherine Mercier-Suissa. After years of looking for the cheapest, a new discourse is emerging. is installed: companies prefer to diversify their supplies and, if they can, buy locally. According to a survey by Bpifrance from January 2022 Among 1,382 industrial SMEs and medium-sized companies (ETI), nearly 20% of them were thinking of rebuilding a production site in France, of which 52% claim to have chosen to do so by “conviction”.
To encourage this return, the executive continued the shift started by François Hollande with the tax credit for competitiveness and employment (CICE), reducing corporate tax, social charges, reducing production taxes . The France Relance plan, with a budget of 100 billion euros over two years, has been earmarked for industry to the tune of 35 billion euros. Nearly 8,900 actors have benefited, according to the Bercy count, mainly SMEs and ETIs. In October 2021, the France 2030 investment plan was also announced, providing 54 billion euros with the aim of “reindustrializing the country, investing massively in innovative technologies and supporting the ecological transition”, as indicates Bpifrance.
Major projects in Germany
But the obstacles to reconquest are still there. “If the industry is to be strengthened, large-scale projects are necessary, because they bring to life a fabric of multiple subcontractors in the territory”, notes David Cousquer. In the Bpifrance survey, 56% of respondents indicated that “relocation is only possible in their sector if the main client sets an example”. Still, large-scale projects have to come in. “For the moment, France does not attract very large capital projects, which go rather to Eastern Europe, especially across the Rhine”, observes the manager of Trendeo. Elon Musk has also chosen Germany to establish his gigafactory Tesla, with the aim of recruiting 12,000 employees there once production has started. “We have brakes due to issues of availability and cost of land on these major projects, but also labor problems: we have been in tension for more than ten years on jobs, such as blacksmiths or boilermakers, for whom we are struggling to fill the classes…” list Anaïs Voy-Gillis.
In addition to these structural problems, there are economic obstacles, in particular the rise in the cost of energy, or the initiatives of other States. The American Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) programme, which largely subsidizes projects linked to carbon-free technologies built in the United States, makes European and therefore French investments less competitive. The momentum symbolized by the opening of the “200 factories” vaunted by Emmanuel Macron could well be further slowed down. The opening announcements continue all the same: on March 4, the start-up Totem announced that the port of Marseille-Fos should welcome a site for the construction of photovoltaic panels by 2025. With these 3,000 direct jobs, it would become the largest “giga-factory” of photovoltaic panels in Europe. Hope on the horizon?