ThyssenKrupp : Angers goes down one more floor

Angers a effectivement encaissé un nouveau coup dur. L'un de ses fleurons industriels, l'usine de fabrication d'ascenseurs ThyssenKrupp, va licencier, d'ici l'été prochain, plus de la moitié de ses salariés. Fait du hasard, pour une toute raison, la mairie avait décidé que tous les drapeaux seraient en berne ce matin.

After the Thomson, Motorola, Act and Packard Bell closures, the industrial weakening of Angers has crossed a new threshold. The Angers ThyssenKrupp Elevator Manufacturing France management has made on September 25 official that more than the half of the factory staff will be laid off before July 2015. That is to say 258 jobs out of 450, 57% exactly! Only about 190 would stay. The sales of the factory have decreased by 26% in six years and are now under 100 millions euros.

Credit Picture : ThyssenKrupp

The holding decided to react. "This project is necessary to protect the competi-tiveness of our group on the elevator sector in a market more and more difficult, especially in France", said the French management of ThyssenKrupp. The local managers met the Angers mayor, Christophe Béchu, to whom they gave "the guarantee that the restructuring didn't endanger the future of the Angers site". Nevertheless, "That news is a new shock for the Angers employment area, already weakened during the last years", pointed out Mr. Béchu.

For many observers, in spite of the complicated situation of the real estate market nationaly and locally, the measure is a complete surprise. "I am very worried, admitted Marc Goua, Angers Member of parliament. At the national scale we must lower the work costs and become again competitive [The ThyssenKrupp group has another factory in Spain who only work to the third of its capacity]. But, at the local level, the Angers industrial area has a big deficit in visibility. Angers doesn't measure up". For a worse reason, all the flags in tow were put at half-mast the same day.