Coca-Cola closes its oldest factory in France

For its sixtieth year, which it will celebrate next year, the oldest Coca-Cola factory in France is having a very sad anniversary. This Thursday, CCEP France, the French subsidiary of the bottler of the king of sodas in Europe, announces the closure of the oldest of its five sites in France. Located in Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine), it has been bottling the group's drinks since 1965 (Coca-Cola classic and zero, Sprite, Fanta, etc.).

CCEP France justifies this closure by the observation that this factory “is located in the heart of a rapidly developing urban area, which constrains activities and significantly limits any development potential of the site in the medium term, thus compromising the competitiveness of the Group in France,” according to a press release published this Thursday morning. The site's activities, including the production lines for 50 centiliter recycled plastic (PET) bottles, and those for products intended for fast food ("bag in box"), will therefore be transferred by the end of the year 2025 on the site near Grigny, in Essonne.

Until then, the group will invest a new envelope of 32 million euros on the Grigny site - after an initial investment of 115 million announced last spring - to accommodate these activities. And above all install a new returnable glass bottling line, that of Clamart being obsolete, for its out-of-home markets (bars, restaurants, etc.). This will have a capacity of 60,000 bottles per hour.

Socially, the consequences of this closure should remain limited. CCEP, which employs 2,500 people in France, plans to eliminate 47 of the 153 positions on its site. The other 106 will be transferred to its Essonne site, with “support measures for geographic and functional mobility, as well as voluntary departures”, specifies CCEP.

But this closure nevertheless remains symbolic for one of the group's oldest industrial footprints in France, and in which CCEP had invested 25 million euros over the last ten years. A level of investment that shows that this site was no longer a priority. Clamart was also known for having the group's fastest PET production line in Europe.

Above all, after the announcement by another American giant Mondelez of the upcoming closure of its Château-Thierry (Aisne) biscuit factory, also in 2025, this closure underlines the current challenges of competitiveness for food manufacturers in France. They are faced with changes in consumption among their customers, and pressure on their costs since the end of the Covid crisis and the start of the war in Ukraine.