The French subsidiary of the American group Mars Wrigley announced on Monday that it would soon cut 280 jobs out of the 350 in its chewing gum factory in Biesheim (Haut-Rhin), due to the drop in sales.
"
Faced with a drastic and continuous drop in demand for chewing gum in tablet formats on European markets, the management of the Mars Wrigley site in Biesheim has informed its social partners and employees of a restructuring plan,
" announced Mars Wrigley France in a press release.
This restructuring results in the "
elimination of 280 positions
" and the "
maintenance of 69 positions
", according to the press release.
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This project will lead to the shutdown, within a year, of the production of tablets, marketed under the Freedent brand.
The production of gums will be maintained to supply other factories of the group in Europe and Africa.
A job protection plan (PSE) will be implemented to find reclassification solutions internal and external to the group, the group added.
Tablets, the traditional format of chewing gum, "
are literally disappearing from the European market
", where sales fell by 37% between 2016 and 2019, aggravated since by the health crisis, continued the group.
74% decrease in volumes in eight years
The volumes produced at the Biesheim plant fell by 74% between 2012 and 2020, and the plant was only running last year at 28% of its capacity, according to a spokesperson.
The site still employed 639 employees in 2013, just before a previous social plan which had cut 207 jobs.
"
It is the death of the site, it is the industrial dismantling of Mars Wrigley
", responded to AFP Didier Dossmann, CFDT delegate of Mars Wrigley on the site near Haguenau (Bas-Rhin).
"
It's a difficult announcement to hear
."
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"
It's a shock for the territory: Wrigley, it represents something, everyone here has someone around them who worked or works there
", commented to AFP the deputy of Haut-Rhin Yves Hemedinger (LR). Affecting a factory located a few kilometers from the Fessenheim nuclear power plant shut down last year, this social plan will "
weaken this territory a little more
", lamented Yves Hemedinger, who called on the State to "
accelerate
" the conversion of this zone.
