Reindustrialization could stall in France due to the effect of the war in Ukraine, inflation and the energy crisis, but it continues to benefit from the energy transition, with projects for photovoltaic plants, wind turbines or batteries, indicate the data transmitted by the specialized firm Trendeo. In the second quarter of 2022, Trendeo registered a 20% drop in job creation in companies compared to the first.
Highly receptive to the immediate economic situation, the distance selling and call center services and online services sectors illustrate the slowdown in growth identified by Trendeo, with 6,583 and 1,092 more jobs eliminated respectively than were created in these two sectors during the first eight months of the year.
Traditional industry, for its part, continued to increase its workforce, with 26,625 new jobs in the first eight months of the year, which represents a positive net balance of 10,074 compared to the January-August 2021 period. 90 have seen the light new factories working in the first half against the 35 that closed. “Start of fall or air hole?”, the semi-annual report of the Trendeo firm that lists and analyzes all the investment announcements of companies in French territory is not decided twice a year.
“As of the end of August, there is no evidence of a violent slowdown in the broader economy,” the report said. But, in April, the balance of job creation and destruction fell “below the 2021 level,” he points out. The growth of business relocations, which had posted a record year in 2021, also appears to be stagnant. In the first half, Trendeo counted 28 relocations against 4 relocations. In the second half of 2021, transfers and relocations amounted to 44 and 4, respectively, and in the first half of 2021, to 46 and 12.
Seven projects of more than 50 hectares
The dynamics of factory creation continues to be “high” and “the many alarm signals about industrial activity have not translated (yet?) into closure decisions,” adds Trendeo. On the startup side, 400 fundraising events were held from January to August 2022, compared to 518 during the same period in 2021, a decrease of 23%. On the other hand, the total funds raised increased by 54% to 5.7 billion euros in 2022, compared to 3.7 billion last year.
Finally, Trendeo analyzed some 1,500 large-scale industrial investment projects -on a plot of more than 50 hectares- announced worldwide between 2016 and 2022 and listed in its database. If the United States has 415, China 124 and the United Kingdom 32, France has only seven, Germany eleven and Poland/Hungary/Czech Republic together ten. The seven French industrial projects in this census are located in the field of energy, linked to the ongoing transition:
Four solar park projects in Allons (Lot-et-Garonne), Labarde (Gironde), Total Quadran in Haulchin (Nord) and MontanSolar & Luxel in Forbach (Lorraine), wind turbine manufacturing projects in Brittany, the electric battery project for Verkor’s automobile factory in the North, and the solar panel manufacturing project of the startup Carbon based in the Loire, in Rhône-Alpes, indicates Trendeo.
Source: BFM TV
