You have to remember the atmosphere in mid-March, said Yves Dubief, president of the Union of Textile Industries (ITU). Confinement, fear of the virus. But in our businesses, fear in our stomachs, we made the masks that the country lacked.
A general mobilization not of 450, but of a thousand companies employing 20,000 people
, or one fifth of the French textile industry, according to Yves Dubief, none of whom previously made masks. United under the emblem Know How Together
, they bought equipment, special fabrics, submitted their prototypes to the Directorate-General for Armaments and Afnor. With the support of the Technical Institute of Fashion, Textiles and Clothing and the Techtera and EuraMaterials competitiveness clusters.
Marc Pradal, president of the French Union of Fashion and Apparel Industries, says that 87 million masks were thus produced. With a production capacity which, modest at the beginning, reached its maximum at 10 million per day
.
But these masks are no longer sold. We would count between 20 to 70 million in stock
, according to Yves Dubief, and enough fabric to make as many. Enough to provide all the French for several weeks.
Because, between the general mobilization sounded by the government and the arrival of products ” made in France “
, we massively imported disposable masks, which are more popular with individuals and businesses. All this in a France that is more and more disconnected with its nose in the wind.
A drama for a company like Tissages de Charlieu, whose CEO, Éric Boël, confided a few days ago on RTL have invested a million euros and end up with a million masks on their hands. Within the Mode Ouest group, 350 employees have been on standby for a week so as not to increase the stock of 250,000 unsold masks or exceed the € 630,000 in lost profits.
Convince companies
There is something to be a little bitter
, admits Yves Dubief. In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, where forty-five companies can produce five million masks per week, the general delegate of the professional organization Unitex, Pierre Chalvin, outright denounces the cold shower
stops or cancellations of orders in favor of imports from low-cost countries. In the West, cities like Nantes, Cholet, have partially supplied fabric masks in Portugal, Spain or Vietnam. The state has even ordered 10 million from Vietnam.
For Guillaume de Seynes, chairman of the strategic committee for the fashion and luxury sector and director at Hermès, it is now up to the State to buy back stocks and place new orders in France.
The textile industry requests that its companies be able to benefit from partial unemployment reimbursed at 100% as was the case for the others during the confinement (but which has been reduced since), while their traditional markets restart (fashion, linen hotels, technical fabrics for cars, aeronautics, etc.).
A mission has just been entrusted Yves Dubief and Guillaume Gibault, CEO of Le Slip français, by Secretary of State Agnès Pannier-Runacher. Objective: to convince Cac 40 companies and export markets that the world after
the pandemic is more like a reusable mask made in France than a disposable object made in China. Too complicated, washing? Of course, this is a constraint
, claims Sylvie Chailloux, President of Mode Grand Ouest. But you have to know what you want. Disposable, or durable, produced in France ”.
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