The energy crisis in France, or when the industry turns off the lights

The oven heated to 1,500 degrees was glowing. Workers at Arc International’s glass factory loaded it with sand, which slowly melted. Not far away, in the workshops, machines injected hot air into the mass of glass and transformed it into thousands of delicate wine glasses, destined for restaurants and homes all over the world.

Nicholas Hodler, chief executive of Arc Group, examined the assembly line, which glistened in the blue glow of the natural gas flames. For years, Arc had benefited from cheap energy, which had helped make it the world’s largest producer of glass tableware and a key employer in this working-class region of northern France. [Pas-de-Calais].

But the repercussions of the sudden cut in Russian gas in Europe have put the company in difficulty. The rise in energy prices is such that Hodler has had to revise his economic forecasts six times in two months. Recently, the company put a third of its 4,500 employees on partial unemployment. Of the plant’s nine furnaces, four will be closed; the others will switch from methane to diesel, a cheaper but more polluting fuel.

“This is the most dramatic situation we have ever experiencedexplains Hodler, shouting to muffle the clink of glasses. For energy-intensive companies like ours, this is a real blow ”.

Half of aluminum and zinc production has stopped

Arc is not the only one in this case. The surge in energy prices is heavily penalizing European industry, forcing factories to rapidly reduce production and putting thousands of employees partially unemployed. While such measures should be temporary, they increase the risk of a deep recession in Europe. Eurozone industrial production fell 2.3% in July from the previous year, the largest decline in more than two years.

Other sectors, such as metallurgy, paper mills, fertilizer production and many others, have announced savings measures. In fact, it depends on gas and electricity to transform raw materials into finished products, from car doors to cardboard boxes. According to Eurometaux, the European association of the metallurgical industry, half of the aluminum and zinc production has been stopped.

Europe’s largest steel producer, Arcelor Mittal, has closed its blast furnaces in Germany. Alcoa, a global manufacturer of aluminum products, is cutting the production of its blast furnace in Norway by a third. In the Netherlands, Nyrstar, the largest zinc producer, has stopped production until further notice.

Toilet paper is also no exception: in Germany the company Hakle, one of the largest producers, has announced that it has become insolvent due to a “Historical energy crisis”.

Arc provides 15,000 indirect jobs

A crisis that worries the inhabitants of Arques. The economy of this city has been linked to glass processing for more than a century. The Arco group as it is today was founded in 1825 with the name of Verrerie Cristallerie d’Arques, then it was a

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