" Such a waste! Seeing all these people who don't have a mask makes my heart ache. I think about it at night! Juliette (the first name was changed at the request of the witness) is disgusted. This Breton woman made masks for thirty-five years in Plaintel (Côtes-d'Armor) before her factory closed in 2018. This industrial jewel, created in 1984 by the Giffard company, has known its heyday in of the Sperian Protection group, world leader in the sector in the 2000s. With the outbreaks of SARS and the H1N1 flu, the factory produced up to 200 million masks per year and orders poured in, in particular from the French State.
In 2010, Sperian was bought by the American conglomerate Honeywell. The following year, large contracts, including that of the French government, were not renewed. Social plans, funded by public funds, succeed each other until the closure was announced in May 2018. "I had found a buyer who wanted to keep the site but Honeywell did not want to hear anything," regrets Jean- Jacques Fuan, former managing director, from 1991 to 2006.
The production is relocated to Tunisia and the multinational sends the machines to the scrapyard of the Plaintel site "while it had benefited from installation aid", indignant Alain Cadec, the president of the departmental council of Côtes-d 'Armor. The CGT and CFDT union sections had raised a cry of alarm and stepped up efforts to avoid the worst. "They were even addressed to the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron and to the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire", recalls the union union Solidaires des Côtes-d'Armor.
"Never be surprised again"
"Nobody answered us," accuses Juliette. While the country is facing a dangerous shortage of masks and Emmanuel Macron is now promoting made in France, the mess of Plaintel is pointed out. "It is the symbol of the deindustrialization of our territory," notes Senator PS Christine Prunaud. "The State is failing", tances Alain Cadec.
An unacceptable situation for Jean-Jacques Fuan who, with the help of former employees and former Secretary of State Guy Hascoët, is working on the reopening of the factory. He found the trace of the Breton company which had manufactured the last production lines. "The plans exist, I'm now waiting to find out how much it would cost to redo them," he explains. An owner of industrial goods proposed to him to make available premises, near Saint-Brieuc. The revival of the activity, which could be in the form of a cooperative society of collective interest (Scic), would however not be effective before a year. What about the opportunities once the crisis is over?
"It will be necessary to replenish stocks and secure production in the territory so as never to be surprised again," says Guy Hascoët. The region, through the voice of its vice-president, Martin Meyrier, seems ready to support the project, provided that "the announcements of the State go further and that it provides guarantees to project leaders on future channels supply ”.
