According to the group, the two industrial sites are suffering from a “serious lack of activity”. Historically dedicated to the production of starters, the L’Isle-d’Abeau plant, which employs 350 people, made a shift in 2022 towards the production of 48-volt electric motor systems for hybrid vehicles. “But this technology is no longer in demand today,” notes a spokesperson for the group to L’Usine Nouvelle. As for the La Suze-sur-Sarthe site, which produces heat exchangers for all types of vehicles, Valeo notes a lack of load at the plant despite investments made in recent years to modernize the production tool. The plant employs 270 people.
Search for potential buyers underway
For its part, the R&D center at La Verrière would require a large injection of money of “several tens of millions of euros to bring it up to standard, particularly in terms of thermal insulation. This is money that we would rather direct towards investments in future R&D than in buildings,” the spokesperson explains. The possibility of bringing together activities and employees on other sites in the Paris region has been mentioned, but is not officially under consideration.
“The FO Metallurgy Federation strongly condemns the plan of the automotive equipment manufacturer Valeo to launch a new restructuring,” regrets Force Ouvrière in a press release published on Tuesday, July 16. The union organization fears a relocation of industrial activities to so-called “low-cost” countries, such as Turkey or Poland. Valeo rejects any intention in this regard: “all we are doing at this stage is looking for a buyer,” the group states, which has enlisted the services of the human resources consulting firm Alixio.
“An unprecedented human tragedy”
“We want to find solutions, but we can only be very worried,” says Bertrand Bellanger, FO Métaux coordinator at Valeo France, who fears “an unprecedented human tragedy,” citing in particular the case of the La Verrière site: “they have just been hit with a purge of 200 people as part of a job protection plan and now they are being hit with a second one!” At the start of 2024, Valeo announced its intention to cut 1,150 jobs worldwide, including 235 in France, as part of the merger of the thermal systems divisions (Thermal System) and propulsion systems (Powertrain System).
Valeo has 23 production sites and 14 R&D centers in France, and employs 14,000 people. During a meeting with the press in early 2023, the company’s CEO, Christophe Périllat, assured that Valeo “did not have a subject of overcapacity (of production) in Europe”.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
