2023-08-28 15:11:19
Lionel Gougelot (at Escaudoeuvres), with AFP / Photo credit: DELPHINE LEFEBVRE / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
modified to
7:12 p.m., August 28, 2023
The Belgian agri-food company Agristo bought Monday from the Tereos group its Escaudoeuvres sugar factory in the North, closed in March, to open a potato processing plant there in 2027, ultimately providing some 350 jobs. “It’s a victory tinged with bitterness, but we have to look to the future,” said Minister Delegate for Industry, Roland Lescure, when signing the agreement on the site, which employed 123 people.
An investment of 350 million euros
This reindustrialization project reassures the mayor of the town, Thierry Bouteman. “The new smell to which we will have to get used to, since before we had the smell of sugar from cooked beets. Now it will be fries. It’s a new adventure that is coming up, with 350 million Euros of investment, 350 jobs… It’s a great opportunity for the area”, greets the mayor of this town which adjoins Cambrai.
Agristo has actually indicated that it plans to invest 350 million euros to build a new factory and produce fries, röstis and other frozen patties there by the second half of 2027, ultimately creating 350 direct jobs. Tereos, owner of the Béghin Say and La Perruche brands, must take charge of dismantling the sugar refinery, which is nearly 150 years old. Founded in 1986, Agristo employs around 1,200 people in Belgium and the Netherlands and achieves a turnover of some 900 million euros.
He plans to process 500,000 tonnes of potatoes per year in Escaudoeuvres, supplied by “200 to 250 farmers, all located less than 150 km from the factory”. Its managing director Kritof Wallay notably highlighted the site’s good logistical connections. The state will “continue to support” the implementation of this project, according to the ministry. Agristo does not envisage the resumption of any of the employees of the sugar factory, to whom the PSE concluded in June provides for an internal reclassification to be proposed in September. “A total of twenty dry layoffs” are anticipated, according to the ministry. Tereos must also maintain logistics activities on part of the site, employing 40 of the 123 initial employees.
But all this does not erase the bitterness of Tereos employees, partly reclassified on other factories of the group or assigned to what will be here only a sugar packaging site. “We are happy, it’s very good. We, personally, there is a little bitterness all the same because we wanted to keep our site”, confides an employee to Europe 1.
“Industrial reorganization”
The second sugar group in the world, behind the German Südzucker, Tereos announced in early March the closure of this sugar refinery, as well as of its distillery in Morains in the Marne, as part of an “industrial reorganization”. According to the group, the site suffered from a “decline in the volumes of beets involved”, explained “mainly by agronomic reasons (crop rotation, drought, jaundice)”.
Tereos announced in June that it had turned the page on an “unprecedented crisis” and achieved “record” operating profit for the 2022-23 financial year, boosted by sugar prices. Roland Lescure felt that it was not “normal” for a beneficiary company to close a factory during a visit to Cambrésis in March. He then also ordered Nestlé to find a buyer for another closed factory in the area, the Buitoni site in Caudry at the heart of the scandal of frozen pizzas contaminated with Escherichia coli bacteria. On this file, “there are leads but it is too early to talk regarding solutions”, he said on Monday.
He indicated that 87 new investment projects had been identified as part of an aid project for industrial rebound in the area, totaling up to 287 million euros in possible investments, eligible for this aid.
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