Michelin restructuring, investing €90m at Clermont-Ferrand

Clermont-Ferrand, France – Michelin has announced a series of decisions to restructure its industrial and service activities in Clermont-Ferrand, with the aim of strengthening the group’s decision-making centre.

The French tire-maker will close its Clermont-Ferrand-based truck re-treading workshop on the Combaude site without any compulsory redundancies by the end of 2017, it announced on 1 March.

The 330 employees in the workshop, including the 266 production operators will be redeployed to other industrial sites in the area.

“The strong recruitment needs of other plants in the Clermont-Ferrand area, which need to hire 400 production workers over the next three years, will facilitate these internal redeployments,” said Michelin.

According to the tire-maker, the “re-treading crisis”, which saw the European market fall 25 percent between 2007 and 2015, has led to structural overcapacity in the production of re-treaded tires in the EU.

This, it added, has meant Michelin “is now forced to rationalise its industrial base by focusing its re-treading activities on a limited number of sites”.

Michelin also announced that it intended to consolidate the positioning of its Clermont-Ferrand sites with activities that have high technological content and high added value

“Michelin is engaging in a new €90-million investment programme to finance equipment and advanced processes on its sites in Cataroux, Combaude and Gravanches,” said the tire-maker.

The new investment will see the Combaude site specialised in the role of supporting the development of new products.

The site’s industrial and technical innovation activities will be strengthened, particularly as regards the design of curing moulds and high technology textile reinforcements, and the development of specific tools for manufacturing processes.

At the Cataroux site, a major investment will be made in new production processes to develop racing tires and their components.

The Gravanches site, which manufactures high performance car and van tires, will see an increase in the technical levels of its production.

The French tire-maker will also reorganise its engineering group, which employs 2400 worldwide, including 1100 in France, with 970 in Clermont-Ferrand.

Michelin said it will be creating a manufacturing engineering (ME) entity, the global management of which will be located on the Carmes site in Clermont-Ferrand.

The reorganisation will result in 164 job cuts by the end of 2018, all based in Clermont-Ferrand, but without any compulsory redundancies, Michelin said.

To finance these restructuring projects, the Michelin Group will enter a provision of approximately €55 million euros in non-recurring expenses in its accounts to 30 June.