soon several factories will be shut down in France

The decline in the global tire market will force the French manufacturer Michelin to halt production in several of its factories for a few weeks.

The overall slowdown in economic activity in the automobile sector is now affecting Michelin, which has indicated in recent hours that it is shutting down certain French factories for a few weeks due to the decline in the global market in the sector. Production will therefore cease for approximately three weeks, by the end of the current year, on the sites of Troyes (Aube, agricultural tires) and Puy-en-Velay. (Haute-Loire, civil engineering). Employees will then be placed on partial unemployment, “to compensate for cyclical reductions in workload”, explained Michelin.

Optimize production

Concerning the tires fitted to cars, On the side of tires for cars, the subject of the drop in activity has also been raised several times” on the sites of Cholet (Maine-et-Loire), Vannes (Morbihan) and Tours (Indre-et-Loire), which manufacture semi-finished products and tires, the group said, adding that employees of the Gravanches site in Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme), which produces high-performance tires for cars, will be on leave for two weeks “in order to optimize the site’s production”, which must be reorganized, said a spokesperson for the group.

A global slowdown

To the newspaper Le Parisien, the CEO of Michelin, Florent Menegaux also specified that these “pauses” were linked to “the slowdown of the world economy in general, especially in the automobile sector where manufacturers’ sales are down 20% to 25% (…) “We are obliged to adapt our production to the circumstances. But we must distinguish the situation and the structure. We never close a site for economic reasons.”