Plastic recycling, low-carbon cement, biotechnologies, lasers or even hydrogen: 76 new factories or expansions were born in France in 2022, BPIFrance said Thursday, which is committed to reindustrialization around climate and health, but fears a slowdown in investments in 2023 Last year, 1,900 industrial start-ups (of which more than 70% are related to health or climate) and more than 10,000 innovative SMEs were counted in France by the public investment bank that published Thursday the first census of its kind.
These companies constitute the breeding ground for a “reindustrialization”, estimates BPIFrance, while the country has emptied in twenty years “of almost half of its factories and a third of its industrial employment” between 1995 and 2015, as pointed out by the CEO of the bank, Nicolas Dufourcq, in his book “La déindustrialisation de la France” (Odile Jacob, 2022).
The 76 new industrial sites inaugurated in 2022 are the source of 3,000 direct job creations, specifies BPIFrance. Thirty-five come from start-ups that have created their first pilot manufacturing line or their first factory, mainly in agribusiness, waste recovery or industrial chemistry. The remaining 41 are carried out by innovative SMEs or ETIs (intermediate-sized companies), in the consumer goods and agro-industry sectors.
Batteries, bugs and aircraft
The bet of “100 new factories opened per year” launched in January 2022 by Emmanuel Macron by 2025, is on track “to be fulfilled”, estimates Paul-François Fournier, executive director of innovation at BPIFrance, in an interview with AFP in al margin of the Global Industrie exhibition held in Lyon. But next year is likely to be more difficult as interest rate hikes around the world are holding back investment.
“We are not immune to a year 2023 that will be more subdued than 2022, fundraising is more difficult, but we are equipped to deal with it,” he says. Last year, fundraising by French industrial startups rose 36%, to €3.78bn, two-thirds of which in French regions, outside Ile-de-France, and against a trend overall bearish. “France thus surpasses Germany and reaches the first position of the countries of the European Union”, adds BPIFrance.
“One of the likely reasons is that German venture capital is more dependent than France on Anglo-Saxon venture capital. It has kept its French venture capital industry developed over the last ten years,” said Paul-François Fournier.
Last year, eight fundraisers raised more than 100 million euros in France, in Exotec (robots for order preparation), Verkor (batteries), Lhyffe (green hydrogen), Soitec (semiconductors), Flying Whales (airships), Innovafeed (insects for animal feed), DBV (biotechnology) and Valvena (biotechnology, vaccines). And 600 of the 1,900 startups identified have raised more than one million euros, “which places us at the beginning of a reindustrialization plan in a long cycle,” adds Paul-François Fournier.
“Lots of potential”
“Since 2016, France has reversed the trend of factory openings and closures, as evidenced by the statistics published each year by the Trendeo firm. Now everyone, bosses, trade unionists, trainers, students and employees, are aware of a great movement around to reindustrialisation, through innovation”, adds Paul-François Fournier. To encourage the trend, the government is planning a “green industry” bill which is due to go to Parliament this summer.
But it will have to be implemented at zero budgetary cost, Renacimiento deputy and member of the finance committee of the National Assembly Mathieu Lefebvre warned this Wednesday during a press conference. BPIFrance relies above all on monitoring the France 2030 public investment plan, which aims to finance up to 54 billion euros over five years for the country’s major ecological and economic transitions. “There is still a lot of potential,” says Paul-François Fournier.
By the end of 2022, 10 billion euros of 54 had been pledged. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne indicated in November that she wanted to “accelerate” its implementation so that 20 billion would be pledged by the end of 2023.
Source: BFM TV
