- After having produced in an emergency, 400 companies are left with millions of washable cloth masks on their arms
- They ask the state to mobilize to sell their production
- 20 Minutes interviewed a mask manufacturer who regrets having embarked on the adventure.
Masks, we want masks, where are the masks? Remember, it was barely two months ago. The deaths were counted by the hundreds every day and the State somehow hid that it had stolen its stocks of FFP2 and FFP3 for a long time, mobilizing all the available forces to "relocate a production made in France". The tricolor textile sector did not skimp on participating in the war effort, but today 400 companies are left with millions of washable cloth masks on their arms. While a meeting was held this Monday with the Secretary of State for the Economy, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, to perpetuate the sector, 20 Minutes spoke with Véronique Granata, director of Atelier d'Ariane, a fabric manufacturer in the outskirts of Troyes (Grand Est), who regrets having embarked on the adventure.
How many masks have you failed to sell?
We have roughly two million washable category 1 masks that meet the performance criteria defined by AFNOR and ANSM and who wait at a logistician who must pay to keep masks that nobody buys.
How did you get there?
We have no more orders. Two million seems a lot, but at the start of the crisis, if we had been able to respond to all the requests we had, it sold out in two days! And again, I'm nice. To be honest, we were contacted by a local clinic before the government even asked us to mobilize. At the beginning of April, we had requests from everywhere. The ARS, pharmacies, town hall, communities, shopping centers who wanted to equip their staff at the time of the controversy of unprotected employees, and then companies who wanted to return to work. But by the time we size the company to produce on a large scale, we were unable to respond to half of the requests.
What investment has this meant for your business?
The 80 employees of the company are put to manufacture exclusively masks. We even recruited two workshops for 10 additional people on fixed-term contracts and set up partnerships with other subcontractors to go faster. Our regular customers understood very well that we put them aside during the crisis, and there was a certain pride on our part, but today we have sold a little more than a million masks and we have two times more in stock, which will eventually sink our cash if we do not find customers.
At no time did you have worries to sell them?
This is where we did not distrust. Usually, as an industrialist, at no time do you launch your head down without being assured of outlets. But there it was so anxiety-provoking, to hear that there were no masks as soon as we turned on the TV, everyone went away. Except that it went back down as quickly as it went up, we didn't have time to turn around.
When did you feel that nobody needed your masks anymore?
It happened overnight. By May 12, there were no more requests. We started to revive people who we hadn't been able to answer in the first days. We tried to revive the pharmacies because they were starting to have the right to sell them, nothing. We tried to revive the communities, nothing either. The masks arrived from everywhere.
Are you disappointed with the government's promises to regain national sovereignty over the manufacture of masks?
What is hard to digest is that we did not have any information. The state asked us to produce, but at no time did it warn us that purchases had been made everywhere and that we would have to be careful. Between the sanitary measures to be deployed and the supplies to be secured since we could not get the raw materials, it took us time to organize. Then, once everything starts to roll in an industrial way, we no longer need us.
What are you asking the state today?
Agnès Panier-Runacher came to visit our factory in Troyes last Monday, just when we started to worry. She asked us to structure ourselves commercially so that we could sell them. Except that we didn't do that for that and that it's not our job! We are manufacturers. We hope that the state will buy the masks we have left, even if it will redistribute them later. We responded present, and that's normal, but today there are regrets, obviously. If there is a second wave and we have to produce again, I will answer "Thank you, but we have given, we give way to others".
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- Deconfinement
- Textile
- Covid 19
- Coronavirus
- Economy