No buyer has filed a resumption of resumption of the home delivery company of food products, despite the interest for a time manifested by the discount Tazita brand.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
The compulsory liquidation of the home delivery company of food products Place du Marché (ex-Toupargel) and its sisters companies was pronounced on Friday January 13. 1,900 jobs are deleted in one of the most important social plans in recent months.
The Commercial Court of Lyon had given itself forty-eight hours on Wednesday to make its deliberation concerning this company based in Civrieux-d’Azergues (Rhône). But the outcome was hardly in doubt, because no buyer had submitted any offer, despite the interest for a time manifested by the discount Tazita brand.
Friday, the court thus placed in judicial liquidation place du Marché (1,600 employees) and its two sisters companies, Eismann and Touparlog (300 employees in their own), according to its deliberation that the France-Presse agency was able to consult. “There is no hope of recovery,” WaFaa Kohily, the secretary (CGT) of the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) on Wednesday.
“Our priority is to work on the preparation of this compulsory liquidation and to support the employees at best with the state services so that they bounce back as quickly as possible,” said the president of The company, Brieuc Fruchon. The period of forty-eight hours had been justified by the president of the court by “the importance of the file and the number of employees of the group”, according to M me kohily.
The liquidation will indeed lead to one of the most important social plans in recent months, after that of the Camaïeu textile brand in September (2,100 employees) and the abolition of 1,200 jobs (out of 2,300) announced at the end of December At Scopelec, a group specializing in communication technologies.
fall in sales
The market place situation deteriorated very quickly: the group had asked at the end of October its investment in safeguard procedure, then had been placed in receivership at the end of November 2022. “Such a procedure in three months, putting 1,600 families on the tile, it’s ubiquitous! “Denounced Wafaa Kohily, pinning in passing the” deafening silence of the Bahadourian “on this file.
The two brothers Léo and Patrick Bahadourian, shareholders of the flourishing brand Grand Frais, resumed Toupargel in 2020 via the Agihold France holding company. They “did not deign to” be at the hearing on Wednesday, deplored the union manager.
“Again, the capital of certain passing before broken lives,” she added, stressing that the unions claimed “100,000 euros per employee of Supralegal Prime, given the heritage of the Bahadourian”, classified 90
After his recovery, Toupargel had renamed Place du Marché in 2021, with the idea of significantly extending his offer beyond the frozen, to fresh products and the grocery store. Some distributed products also came from the same suppliers as large costs. The project also aimed to accelerate online sales, while the company has built its model on sales by phone.
But this strategy failed, fueling a fall in sales, from 271 million euros in 2017 to 200 million in 2021-2022. “The average age of our customers is quite high, many are over 70 years old and do not have access or do not know how to use the Internet. The name change also disturbed it,” said Lise Delaizé , CGT delegate and Télévenduse for twenty-four years.
and if The liquidation represents a real shock for employees, it will also affect, according to them, part of the customers. “For many people, the Place du Marché deliveryman was the only person they saw during the day, especially in rural areas,” said Lionel Massa on Wednesday, elected FO to the CSE, himself a delivery man in the saint region -Brieuc.