Safran’s choice to build new factories in Morocco instead of France reflects the aeronautical manufacturer’s desire not to depend on a “single source,” its CEO explained to BFM Business on Thursday. Safran, a manufacturer of aircraft engines, including the Airbus A320neo and the single-aisle Boeing 737MAX, with full order books, began construction work on a new industrial complex near Casablanca on Monday, which will include an engine final assembly unit, a first outside France.
“We had the option to continue investing and expand our activities in Villaroche (in Seine-et-Marne, ed.) or invest outside France. And we decided to do it outside France, that is, in Morocco, to effectively have this double source,” he added.
No installations in towns managed by environmentalists
He praised Morocco as a country “full of talents, which is in full dynamics. Under the leadership of the king (Mohammed VI), there is a real industrial dynamic. There are very modern infrastructures. There are talents, formidable engineering schools. And then there is a stable macroeconomic environment.” The group’s policy also leads it to “invest periodically in France”, he noted, in particular in a new factory in Ain. In this week of presentation of the finance bill, the head of Medef, Patrick Martin, stated on Wednesday that he feared a “fiscal overbid” “that certain political groups will inevitably play during the debates.”
For his part, Olivier Andriès, who had stated in April that “today it is no longer a question of investing in France in a city owned by an environmentalist majority”, after the criticism made the previous year by the “green” elected officials of Rennes against the creation of a foundry with 500 jobs at stake, lamented on Thursday that the country sometimes seems to live “in a bubble.” The current president of the French Group of Aeronautical and Space Industries (Gifas) estimated that “in general, in France we tend to forget (…) that before redistributing value, it is first about creating it”, since other countries have understood, according to him, the importance of “having a policy of welcoming investors.”
Source: BFM TV
