In Toulouse, the judicial liquidation of the Fiber Excellence factory definitively ratified

In the absence of a takeover offer, the Toulouse commercial court on Thursday declared the cessation of activity of the Fiber Excellence pulp mill in Saint-Gaudens, in Haute-Garonne, already technically under the liquidation regime since July. The former number 1 in pulp and paper in France will therefore have to lay off all of its approximately 300 employees at the industrial site and headquarters, located in Labège near Toulouse, pending the possible realization of a new project, carried out jointly by a Portuguese group and the Occitanie region, during the coming year.

The Fiber Excellence group, burdened by declining profitability in particular in the face of rising wood prices in recent years, requested its placement in receivership in April, when it had 670 employees and two factories, that of Saint-Gaudens and another in Tarascon, in Bouches-du-Rhône. The liquidation of this second site was declared this summer in the absence of a takeover offer, while the Haut-Garonne site was granted a reprieve thanks to the prospect of a relaunch project by the Portuguese paper group Ghost, supported by the region and the Alsatian industrialist Soprema.

300 employees affected

It is this last project to “relaunch the production of paper pulp and (de) development of high value-added processing activities”, according to the Occitanie region, which was not the subject of a formal offer before the deadline of October 23, needing more time to formalize according to its defenders, which opened the way to a definitive liquidation, at least on the judicial level. The judicial representative indicated at the end of October that professional security contracts (CSP) were going to be offered for one year to the company's 300 remaining employees, a France Travail system intended to preserve the availability of this qualified workforce with a view to a possible resumption of activity at the end of 2027.

With the prospect of a relaunch within a year of the Saint-Gaudens factory, the economic heart of a territory in great economic difficulty, “the security of employees is fundamental”, as is “the maintenance of the industrial site”, a source close to the matter then underlined. After injecting nearly 300 million euros into the Fiber Excellence group, its Indonesian shareholder Jackson Wijaya threw in the towel in the spring, highlighting the company's lack of profitability and refusing to invest again.