Latécoère moves its latest processing site near Toulouse

2024-10-08 18:27:49

Since the end of August 2024, the machine tools of the Latécoère factory in Montredon, in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), have been gradually evacuated, while the site will have to be transformed, according to the industrialist, into a research and development center and a customer support. Thus ends an adventure that lasted just over six years. In May 2018 the site was in fact inaugurated with great fanfare. As the century-old group announced at the time, a factory of the future, “4.0”, had just seen the light in the commercial area of ​​Toulouse. For Latécoère, this production site is part of the “Transformation 2020” reorganization plan.

But in January 2023, the aeronautical subcontractor, specializing in the production of fuselage sections, doors and interconnection systems, announced its desire to transfer the production of this factory to Mexico and the Czech Republic. And the voluntarism demonstrated a few years earlier by the president of the Occitania region, Carole Delga, therefore does not seem to have had any effect, since the processing activity will in fact be transferred to the Central European country.

6.2 million euros in public aid

This reconversion represents an intolerable situation for the elected communists of the Haute-Garonne departmental council, while the Latécoère group had benefited from public money to finance this project. “The financial managers at the helm of this company have decided to ignore public money by moving its business abroad,” they underline in a statement. They therefore ask that “the public money committed by the State and the region of Occitania be returned, to be put at the service of as many people as possible”.

These elected representatives highlight the sums received by the Latécoère group, in particular the 5.4 million euros coming from the State as part of the “Factory of the Future” plan and the 800,000 euros in European funds managed by the Occitania region.

Figures that make Latécoère react. The aeronautical subcontractor indicates in fact that the subsidy of 1.33 million euros received from European funds “mainly concerns industrial innovation activities (additive manufacturing, automation of electrical paths) but also product” but that “in no case (… ) financed the processing machines “of Montredon. As for France Relance, Latécoère specifies that 480,000 euros participated in the financing of the clean room and oven of the composites research center inaugurated in September 2023 in Montredon and 450,000 “benefited from the industrial innovation activities” of the group.

The relocation of these activities should not, according to the management, give rise to layoffs, since in April 2023 an agreement for the management of jobs and career paths was signed with the trade unions. A total of 110 people have worked on the site so far.