CLERMONT-FERRAND, France (March 2, 2016) — Group Michelin is planning to restructure its industrial and service activities in Clermont-Ferrand, investing $98 million through year-end 2018 in several measures designed to strengthen the group's decision-making center.
At the heart of the resturucturing is the company's decision to close a truck retread plant in Combaude, a Clermont-Ferrand district, and redeploy the facility's 330 employes to other industrial sites in the area, the firm said.
Michelin cited two factors in its decision to close the plant: the “strong recruitment needs” of other plants in the Clermont-Ferrand area and reduced demand for retreads in the European Union.
Michelin said it will need to hire 400 production workers over the next three years to fill job openings at other factories in the Clermont-Ferrand area, where it has two other tire plants and a number of other headquarters facilities.
Much of the $98 million investment program will go toward financing new equipment and advanced production processes at the firm's tire plants in Cataroux (racing tires), Gravanches (high-performance car and light truck/van tires) and Combaude (engineering support for other factories, including the design of curing molds and high technology textile reinforcements, and the development of specific tools for manufacturing processes.)
Michelin did not quantify the investment's impact on production capacities at these sites, but it did say it will reorganize its engineering group, which employs 970 workers in Clermont-Ferrand out of 1,100 in France and 2,400 worldwide.
