Railcoop’s bankruptcy filing soon? The railway cooperative faces “an urgent need for cash”, it announced to its members, after presenting a deficit of 4.3 million euros for the year 2022, the AFP learned this Wednesday.
The cooperative says it needs 100,000 euros before June 30, then 300,000 euros before July 31 and 500,000 euros before September 30, all to pay salaries and pay suppliers.
For the summer of 2024, Railcoop estimates its needs at 2.8 million euros to hire and train personnel to operate the Bordeaux-Lyon railway line that it wishes to relaunch.
To achieve this, he hopes to encourage each member to get back on the boat by taking action. It also asks them to recruit new members and is counting on “a cash loan, from new financial partners,” without further details. It is also based “on bank loans, guaranteed by local authorities”, without indicating which ones.
Risk of cessation of payment
Railcoop evokes another rescue initiative: the sale of 100,000 30-euro vouchers between July 4 and September 30. Railcoop is betting on a “broadest and least expensive campaign possible” to attract new members and encourage those already present, which number 14,000, to invest again.
But “who is going to guarantee our loans in the current situation?” asked Thierry Marty, a former representative of the Unsa-Ferroviaire union, a now-retired former SNCF salaried administrator, a Railcoop affiliate, during an interview with AFP.
Calling the cooperative’s plan “unrealistic”, Thierry Marty said he expected an imminent default. Because “I don’t see cooperative members reinvesting even 100 euros in the company.” The company could not be reached on Wednesday.
Railcoop had already announced at the end of April that it was suspending its loss-making freight business to focus on passenger transport.
The goal remains to offer two daily round trips between Bordeaux and Lyon, reviving a cross link abandoned by the SNCF in 2014. Initially, the cooperative intends to launch two daily round trips to Limoges “in the very short term” -Lyon and a one-way ticket Montluçon-Lyon.
Source: BFM TV
