Saupiquet closes its last French company: why the Quimper factory was a monument to local industry

In 2014-2015, the Quimper factory, Saupiquet’s last French site, employed up to 220 permanent people, with a number of temporary workers bringing the total workforce to nearly 300 employees. According to a now retired trade unionist, the Saupiquet staff had solid know-how which was measured by their production speed. Many of these women and men came from closed canneries in the Pays Bigouden or Cap-Sizun.

• 2 The Italian Renaissance

  In the 1990s, the restructuring of the group plunged Saupiquet into turmoil. The Italian multinational Bolton Food, which became its owner in 1999, appears to be the savior. In Quimper, employees want to believe it. Politicians too. The Vannes factory was closed in 2009. A fourth production line (RHD) was launched in Quimper seven years later, leading Saupiquet to process 13,000 tonnes of fish, 85% of which was for 70 million cans. In 2017, Saupiquet then claimed a turnover of €160 million.

The terrible news falls in June 2024, six years after the reorganization of the Italian multinational and two years after a first alert from the unions. The management of Bolton Food mentions a drop in consumption on the canned fish market in France and Europe, “- 25% between 2020 and 2023”, with €5 million loss on the French market announced in 2023, outlet of 90 % of Quimper production. Bolton Food announces that it will transfer its production to Spain and Morocco.

• 3 More than a century of employment in Quimper

  If collective memory is, in southern Finistère, marked by the Saupiquet factory, it is undoubtedly because it has existed in conversations and the urban landscape of Quimper since 1901. After opening a first sardine cannery in Nantes , Arsène Saupiquet built a large vegetable cannery (14,000 m2) on the banks of the Steir in Quimper, in a space now reclaimed by city center uses: parking and multiplex shops.

  The development of the city is linked to the history of the factory. While the administrative perimeter of the prefectural city expanded in 1960 to give birth to “greater Quimper”, the reconstruction and development of the new factory took shape on 4 hectares on the outskirts, in the Moulin-Vert district. In Quimper, Saupiquet only produced canned fish exclusively in the mid-1980s, but for the entire brand.