Together they formed the “Poitou foundries”, in the plural. A year almost to the day, after the closure of the sister factory, specializing in cast iron, the Aluminum foundry of Ingrandes-sur-Vienne (Vienne), near Châtellerault, should in turn be placed in compulsory liquidation on Tuesday July the 5th. His fate was sealed by the Paris Commercial Court during a hearing on June 21. Its 280 employees will be laid off, like their 292 comrades, a year earlier.
The two automotive parts foundries shared the same and unique client: Renault. The manufacturer had established them in Vienne forty years ago, to relocate the activity of its historic factory in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine). Until production stopped on June 30, “Alu” produced cylinder heads.
“We have the feeling of a huge industrial and social waste. We could have found a solution to maintain jobs and convert the site, believes Jean-Philippe Juin, CGT union representative and spokesperson for the CGT-CFE-CGC inter-union. We hear a lot of talk about relocation and reindustrialization. But the reality is that in our small countryside, everything closes. »
Preliminary investigation for misuse of corporate assets and money laundering
The turmoil, for both sites, began in 2018, with the diesel crisis. They are, in turn, placed in receivership, before being taken over in 2019 by the Liberty House group, one of the companies of GFG Alliance, a conglomerate of the Indo-British magnate Sanjeev Gupta, with opaque functioning. With, at the time, a commitment from Renault on a volume of orders for four years and a promise of investment from the buyer in the diversification of sites.
But the promise will not be kept. When, in March 2021, Greensill, the main financial partner of the GFG Alliance, filed for bankruptcy, all the companies in the group faltered. In Ingrandes, employee representatives immediately alerted to the disappearance of a state-guaranteed loan of 18 million euros, granted to the Alu foundry a month earlier. The money, paid by Greensill, only transited forty-eight hours on the Société Générale des Fonderies account, before returning to Germany. The preliminary investigation for misuse of corporate assets and money laundering, entrusted to the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF), is still ongoing. Searches took place in April.
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