2023-06-01 00:59:43
He had already threatened to stop everything in November. Tuesday, May 30, the volcanic Louis Le Duff, founder of the eponymous group owner of La Brioche Dorée, Bridor, Del Arte (3 billion euros in turnover and 30,000 employees), surprised everyone by announcing the abandonment of its frozen pastries factory project in Liffré (Ille-et-Vilaine). Located twenty kilometers from the Rennes ring road, where the group’s head office sits, the factory was to extend over 21 hectares and hire 500 people to meet the growing demand of Bridor’s 100,000 customers around the world.
“We cannot afford to’wait ten years, or certainly more, for our industrial project to succeed! »regrets the Breton entrepreneur in a press release. “Our competitors abroad take one to two years maximum to obtain the same building permits. »
Mentioned for the first time in 2017, the project for a production site in Liffré, supported by local elected officials, has been revised several times to obtain, in July 2022, the green light from the State services. They judged the adjustments “satisfactory”, in particular on the annual water consumption, estimated at 187,000 m3, and on the preservation of the bocage.
water shortages
For their part, associations, environmental activists and local residents have multiplied demonstrations and administrative appeals. “The Bridor factory is an example of these projects that are no longer acceptable. The Rennes metropolitan area does not have the water capacity to accommodate such a plant, while only 3% of the surface water in the department is in good ecological condition”, claims Arnaud Clugery, director of Eau et rivières de Bretagne, one of the associations that led the revolt. This has found a certain echo in public opinion, in particular after the summer of 2022 marked locally by fires and water shortages.
“Climate change is’is accelerating and the awareness of the issues is real”, hammer the elected environmentalists sitting in opposition to the regional council of Brittany. They “rejoice” of the decision of the Le Duff group and warn: “We will refuse any other destructive agro-industrial project that might want to develop in Brittany. »
The renunciation of Louis Le Duff is as unprecedented as it is symbolic in Brittany where the agri-food industry is the metronome of the regional economy. A third of jobs depend directly or indirectly on the good health of the sector. Until then, the arguments of environmentalists had never resisted the pro-employment discourse of industrialists. The war of attrition waged by a few hundred activists, at the height of the demonstrations in Liffré, is all the more singular in that it pushed back one of the most influential Breton bosses.
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