The French pulp manufacturer, which has filed for bankruptcy, Fibre Excellence, is facing a refusal from its biggest shareholder, a billionaire owner, to release additional financing. Nearly 700 direct jobs and several thousand indirect jobs might disappear.
All the concessions made from the French government were not enough to convince the Indonesian billionaire to save the last French manufacturer of market pulp, which he owns, news outlet Liberation writes. The billionaire refuses to invest further in the company.
“In the absence of evidence of a credible path to sustainable profitability, we are unable to grant additional financing to the group,” stated Peter Wardhana, representative of Jackson Widjaja, which also owns Domtar, one of North America’s leading manufacturers of forest products, in his response to Industry Minister Sébastien Martin on Thursday, April 16, as quoted by Liberation.
“I will not accept this behavior. It is a matter of respect for the employees and the communities mobilized for their jobs. Every effort will be made to ensure that the shareholder assumes its responsibilities,” responded the minister.
Fibre Excellence operates two pulp mills in the south of France — one in Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône) and the other in Saint-Gaudens (Occitanie). The mills have a combined production capacity of 550,000 tons per year of unbleached or bleached pulp.
