These projects, which will be located at the autonomous port of Le Havre, are part of so-called “turnkey” sites, where the State takes charge of a certain number of administrative and environmental procedures in place of the companies.
While the announcements of factory closures, by Michelin, or stores, by Auchan, struck people's minds at the start of the week, the government wants to show that the situation is not so negative in terms of reindustrialization. This Thursday, three ministers – Antoine Armand, for economy and finance, Catherine Vautrin, in charge of territories and decentralization, and François Durovray, for transport – are going to Le Havre to announce three new establishment projects.
Luxembourg's Livista wants to build a refinery to manufacture lithium for batteries for electric vehicles. This project represents an investment of 1.2 billion euros and 300 jobs. The American Air Products will build a platform to import renewable hydrogen. The latter is part of the partnership, announced last July, between the American group and TotalEnergies. This agreement concerns the supply by Air Products of 70,000 tonnes of green hydrogen each year to the French group for a period of 15 years from 2030. The construction of this infrastructure will cost 1.1 billion euros, and will enable employ 270 employees. Finally, the French company Qair will build a factory to produce and store e-fuel based on hydrogen and methanol. The project is worth 500 million euros and 150 direct jobs.
Turnkey sites
These projects will be located in the autonomous port of Le Havre. They are part of so-called “turnkey” sites, where the State takes charge of a certain number of administrative procedures and environmental authorizations in place of companies to make land available more quickly. These lands are often located in the ports of Dunkirk, Marseille-Fos and Le Havre. This is once again the case.
These factories and installations should come out of the ground by 2028 to 2029. They allow the government to show that the projects are not blocked, so industrialists are questioning the sustainability of reindustrialization, particularly at a time when parliamentarians are onslaught of creativity to multiply taxes and tax increases.
Still factory creations in France
Moreover, the new barometer of factory creations, established by the General Directorate of Enterprises (DGE), shows that France always creates more factories than it closes. Unveiled by the daily Les Echosit lists, during the first six months of the year, “a moderate increase in openings and extensions of industrial sites, with 36 net openings”specifies the DGE. If we do not take into account extensions, but only the openings of new sites, the results are however slightly negative, at -8 sites. Above all, the balance sheet marks a very clear deceleration compared to the balance sheet for the years 2022 and 2023, marked by net creations/extensions of +176 and +189. The slowdown is therefore notable. But the balance remains positive…
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