The thirty employees of the Dräger factory in Obernai, who have been in partial unemployment since the beginning of the year, have been dismissed.
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Barely a year after being rewarded by the Minister Delegate in charge of Foreign Trade and Attractiveness, Franck Riester, of a Choose France Prize for his “Express” investment in Alsace, it is with just as many Speed that the German company Dräger has just proceeded, Thursday, May 19, to the dismissal of the staff of its production site of Masks FFP2 and FFP3 in Obernai (Bas-Rhin). Of the thirty employees that the factory still used, only two administrative agents and two maintenance technicians will remain in place to maintain the site.
Dräger excludes a total closure for the moment. “The decline in demand, which we hope as transient as possible, does not share our determination to register our industrial project in Obernai in the long term. We take the necessary measures, in order to restart qualitative production, according to the development From the load plan, respiratory protection being at the heart of our know-how, “said the industrialist.
” We felt the wind turns at the end of 2021 “
It only took a few weeks at the Lübeck firm (Schleswig-Holstein) to install, in the fall of 2020, its 13 mask production lines, in a former sports hangar up to standard for the opportunity. Dräger intended to produce up to 100 million masks per year, intended for the health sector – with, with the key, a major public health order France – but also to industry. The site was able to count, in fact, up to 140 jobs.
But the gradual lifting of health restrictions in Europe has considerably reduced demand, in a market marked by the explosion in the number of producers. The European Resourcement efforts of both public and private orders have also proved more complicated than expected, including for higher technicality products than the FFP2 and FFP3 masks. Consequently, after seeing its reduced rates at first, the Obernai site ended up being partial at the start of the year. Employees were either loaned to other companies or asked to stay at home. The industrialist now claims to want to offer them “the best possible support”.
“We felt the wind turn at the end of 2021,” said the mayor (Les Républicains) of Obernai, Bernard Fischer, who says he understands that Dräger “had no other choice” . Himself a doctor of pharmacy and engaged in the economy committee of the Grand Est region is recognized that “in terms of relocation, it is difficult to move from the will to the realization”. Before concluding, reassuring: “Today, there are 500 industrial jobs that are not provided in the economic basin of Obernai-Molsheim. A certain number of Dräger employees have already found work.”