Latécoère relocates its last machining site near Toulouse

Since the end of August 2024, the machine tools at the Latécoère factory in Montredon, in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), have been evacuated little by little, while the site must be transformed, according to the industrialist, into an R&D center and a customer service center. This is the end of an adventure of just over six years. In May 2018, the site was indeed inaugurated with great fanfare. As the more than century-old group announced then, a factory of the future, “4.0”, had just seen the light of day in the Toulouse business zone. For Latécoère, this production site was part of the “Transformation 2020” reorganization plan.

But, in January 2023, the aeronautical subcontractor, specialized in the manufacturing of fuselage sections, doors and interconnection systems, announced its desire to relocate production of this factory to Mexico and the Czech Republic. And the voluntarism displayed a few years earlier by the president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga, therefore does not seem to have had an effect, since the machining activity will indeed be transferred to the central European country.

6.2 million euros in public aid

This reconversion represents an intolerable situation for the communist elected officials of the Haute-Garonne departmental council, while the Latécoère group had benefited from public money to finance this project. “The financial managers at the head of this company have decided to ignore public money by moving its activity abroad,” they point out in a press release. They therefore ask that “the public money committed by the State and the Occitanie region must be returned, in order to be put at the service of as many people as possible”.

Figures that make Latécoère react. The aeronautical subcontractor indicates in fact that the subsidy of 1.33 million euros received under European funds “mainly concerns industrial innovation activities (additive manufacturing, automation of electrical pathways) but also product” but that it “in no case (…) financed the machining machines” of Montredon. Concerning France Relance, Latécoère specifies that 480,000 euros participated in the financing of the clean room and the oven of the composite research center inaugurated in September 2023 in Montredon and 450,000 “benefited the industrial innovation activities” of the group.

The relocation of these activities should not, according to management, result in redundancies, since an agreement for the management of jobs and career paths had been signed in April 2023 with trade union organizations. In total, 110 people have worked on the site so far.