Emanuele Vasseneixthe head of LSDH group (Dairy Saint-Denis-de-l’Hôtel, eight production sites in France for 2,000 employees), does his math: last year, gas and electricity bill of the group amounted to 10 million euros. There will be 22 million this year and, according to the latest forecasts, 35 million next year: the equivalent of its annual operating profit.
“The energy crisis is terrible”
“We have a price for gluttonydescribes the entrepreneur. Energy, which was our seventh cost, became our second, right after work. The energy crisis is terrible and for us it is both direct and indirect. Direct is the amount of our electricity and gas bills; but also indirectly, because it also affects our suppliers, and therefore the price of our raw materials.“
However, it is difficult to reduce the group’s energy consumption : “We need electricity or gas in the production or storage process of our productsunderlines Emmanuel Vasseneix, one cannot do without, for example, gas boilers to sterilize milkIt is also difficult to fully transfer the increase to sales prices, with the risk of fueling inflation and losing consumers.
“The state must intervene to regulate energy prices”
In these conditions, the group is expected to see its profits decline by 2/3 this year. This will necessarily have consequences for employees, due to the group’s pay system. “We are a company where we have signed profit sharing agreements, profit sharing and even collective pension plans.To explain Guillaume DesrochesCFDT trade union representative. But all of this is obviously indexed to the company’s results, so it necessarily has an impact on us.“
And the situation is less serious than in Duralex, the La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin glassworks, which announced partial unemployment, is still worrying. “The alarm cry is hereconcludes Emmanuel Vasseneix. If our rulers do nothing to regulate energy prices, there will be dramatic cascading consequences. This is all the more essential as these prices are the result of speculative markets, which have no relation to the real costs of energy production.“
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