The American tire manufacturer Goodyear closed the doors of its Amiens-Nord plant in 2014. At the time, the news had led to a factory occupation and even a kidnapping. Nearly ten years later, Goodyear has decided to lease part of its old site to its new owner, according to Courrier Picard, citing several sources familiar with the matter.
Goodyear, tenant of two-thirds of the site
The former Goodyear site was bought in 2017 by BT Immo, a French heavyweight in logistics real estate, and the latter announced a few months ago that it had closed two rental contracts for the occupation of the land transformed into a logistics platform. One of the tenants is Log’s, a French group specializing in the sale of logistics solutions, while the identity of the second has not been revealed by BT Immo.
According to Courrier Picard, it was Goodyear that returned to its old production plant, but this time to use it as a storage and transit point to the rest of Europe and not to manufacture tires. Contacted by BFM Business, the company did not want to confirm the information.
The American will even make it its main logistics center on the continent, according to the regional newspaper. Goodyear has signed its contract with BT Immo for two thirds of the building under rapid construction, that is, 50,000 square meters. The choice to return to the Amiens-Nord site would have been motivated in particular by “the extremely short deadlines of BT Immo, which had no clients before starting work”, explains the Courrier Picard.
In 2014, the closure of the factory sparked a violent social conflict
The closure of the factory in which more than 1,000 employees worked in 2014 was not without turbulence.
At that time, the safeguarding of the site had given rise to sometimes violent clashes between some of the employees and the management, which resulted in particular in the kidnapping of two executives for a few hours. The CGT had also initiated various legal proceedings against the company in an attempt to invalidate the cause of the economic dismissal. Subsequently, Goodyear France management had indicated that no buyer had been found.
Source: BFM TV
