The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Manufacturing Manufacture Of Basic Metal And Fabricated Metal Products Manufacture Of Basic Metals 24.53 - Casting of light metals
280 jobs Number of planned job losses
Announcement Date
5 July 2022
Employment effect (start)
5 July 2022
Foreseen end date
1 September 2022
Description
The Paris Commercial Court has declared the liquidation of Alvance Aluminium Poitou (formerly Fonderie du Poitou Alu) with the dismissal of its 280 employees. This factory manufactured aluminium cylinder heads for the car manufacturer Renault. The employees will be made redundant during the summer. They will benefit from the support offered by a fund (Fonds de reconversion pour les salariés de l'automobile) set up in 2021 and financed by the State, and by the two car manufacturers Renault and Stellantis to support the retraining of redundant employees.
This closure comes one year after the closure of its 'sister plant', the Fonderie du Poitou Fonte (292 employees), which manufactured diesel crankcases for Renault and whose closure was announced in 2019 (Fonderie du Poitou Fonte-2019-FR). The two sites shared the same and unique client: the Renault group, which had set them up in the Vienne department forty years ago, to relocate the activity of its historical factory at Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine). The diesel crisis destabilised the two sites in 2018 to the point of being placed in receivership. They were then bought in 2019 by Liberty House, one of the companies of the GFG Alliance conglomerate. Renault committed to a volume of orders for four years and GFG Alliance promised to invest in diversifying the activities of the two sites. The foundry has received a state-guaranteed loan (PGE) as part of the measures put in place to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, but these funds were immediately transferred to a German subsidiary of the GFG group, leading to an investigation for misuse of corporate assets and money laundering, which has been entrusted to the Central Office for Combating Corruption and Financial and Tax Offences (OCLCIFF).
The newspaper Le Monde points out that the business would still have been viable, according to a study by the state-funded consultancy firm Roland Berger, if the company had invested in diversifying towards the electric or hybrid car market, which needs aluminium parts.
Eurofound (2022), Alvance Aluminium Poitou, Closure in France, factsheet number 107068, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/107068.
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