It’s the end of Mask Coop. The Breton cooperative society, born at the beginning of the health crisis, was put into forced liquidation by the commercial court of Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d’Armor). Installed on the ashes of the last French surgical mask factory, the Coop des masks was officially created in the summer of 2020, before launching the manufacture of surgical and FFP2 masks in Graces, near Guingamp, in January. It still employed thirteen employees.
The project had been started by a small group of former employees of the Spérian factory in Plaintel, closed by the US group Honeywell in 2018. Various public and private actors had participated in the financing. Created under the status of cooperative society of collective interest (SCIC, which associates communities, employees, associations, citizens and companies), the company was placed in receivership only thirteen months after the start of production.
The cooperative society has never managed to capture large orders and face the brilliant return of Chinese competition, in a context of a general drop in demand at the end of the health crisis. The box was also weighed down by an investment of 3.5 million euros in a machine to make meltblown, the filter paper at the heart of the mask, which was never put into production due to a lack of buyers.
chinese imports
Imports of Chinese masks are “still at a very massive level” and “the State itself is undoubtedly the first culprit, because its purchases are mainly made in China,” the president of the board of directors, Christophe, lamented in a press release. Winkler. taking as an example a market that linked the company with the Prefecture of Paris, lost to the benefit of Chinese importers last September. “The same decision was made by the army in May 2022,” he added.
In addition, the leader also pointed the finger at the desertion of investors. According to the company, several members of the Coop des Masques had also sometimes invested large sums and “did not entrust their contracts to their factory for reasons that we do not understand,” lamented the manager, citing the “case of the mutalist group Vyv (…) that he was the first investor” in the company with 300,000 euros and that “he bears a large part of the responsibility for our bankruptcy”.
Source: BFM TV
