The Huawei brand will set up its first European factory in Alsace.

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Geeko

  • It had been in the boxes for a few months: Huawei is going to establish its 5G factory in Alsace, in Brumath, north of Strasbourg.

    Ultimately, 500 jobs could be created.

  • This European factory will allow Huawei to offer an anchor on the homelands of its two main competitors in the telecommunications equipment market, the Swedish Ericsson and the Finnish Nokia.

  • The choice of the Brumath site looks like a snub for the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg, which had proposed the Illkirch-Graffenstaden site.

    Except that the mayor Jeanne Barseghian and the president of the agglomeration Pia Imbs had also signed a platform not very favorable to 5G at the same time ...

The Chinese telecoms giant has decided: it will set up in Brumath, a small town located about ten kilometers north of Strasbourg.

Huawei will set up a production site for equipment related in particular to 5G technology, its first plant of this type outside China.

The site, which will represent a minimum investment of 200 million euros and will initially employ 300 people, will produce these technological solutions for mobile networks for the entire European market.

According to the company, the equivalent of one billion euros of equipment per year should be produced at the site.

“With this factory located at the crossroads of Europe, Huawei enriches its presence on the continent, which is already strong with 23 R & D centers, more than 100 partner universities, more than 3,100 suppliers and a supply chain efficient, ”said the Chinese giant.

Something to delight Jean Rottner (Les Républicains, right), president of the regional council of the Grand-Est region, for whom the announcement of the establishment of Huawei's first production plant outside China in Brumath represents "excellent news which testifies to the economic dynamics of our cross-border territory ”.

"We are in Europe and for Europe"

This European factory will allow Huawei to offer an anchor on the homelands of its two main competitors in the telecommunications equipment market, the Swedish Ericsson and the Finnish Nokia.

"This is the illustration of the guiding principle which governs our work here: we are in Europe and for Europe", assured the president of Huawei, Liang Hua, during the first announcement of this implantation project. in France last February.

A strategic choice that comes in a difficult context for the Chinese group, against the backdrop of a trade war between the United States and China.

Washington has called on many countries, especially in Europe, not to use Huawei infrastructure for the deployment of the new 5G telephone network.

The administration of outgoing President Donald Trump has highlighted a risk of espionage on behalf of the Chinese government.

These accusations are systematically denied by Huawei, which recalls that it has never been caught in a security situation during its 30 years of existence, while attributing the offensive to which it is subject to the desire of the United States to eliminate a powerful competitor.

Strasbourg unwelcoming

If France has never explicitly taken the plunge, refusing the idea of ​​a boycott despite strong restrictions, the United Kingdom and Sweden are the two European countries to have officially excluded the equipment manufacturer from the latest generation mobile network. .

French operators already using Huawei equipment will benefit from operating licenses limited to only eight years for 5G.

"Aware of Huawei's clear desire to establish itself in our department, we addressed to the Prime Minister and the European Commission a number of questions relating to security and economic sovereignty, widely shared by our fellow citizens", had the mayor of Strasbourg Jeanne Barseghian (EELV, environmentalist) reacted on Wednesday.

"Responsibly, I will be attentive to the conditions of installation of Huawei in Brumath and its impact on the territory", she added.

This had not prevented the president of the Eurometropolis, Pia Imbs, from receiving representatives of Huawei in mid-October for a meeting deemed then "positive".

Within the agglomeration, the Illkirch-Graffenstaden site had been proposed and seemed to hold the line.

Until the final choice of Huawei, in favor of Brumath therefore.

Vetter tackles Barseghian and Imbs

A failure for the ecological town hall of the Alsatian capital?

This is what Jean-Philippe Vetter (LR) underlined in the opposition.

“When a company has the choice between a territory that welcomes it with open arms and a community that openly shows its reluctance, the choice is easy [...] The mistrust expressed by the president of the metropolis and the mayor of Strasbourg will have no no doubt weighed in the balance, “reacted the former municipal candidate.

“In the end, 5G antennas will be installed anyway, but our territory will have missed out on 500 qualified jobs and significant tax revenues for purely ideological reasons.

We will therefore have Huawei antennas but not Huawei jobs.

What a waste… ”he concludes.

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  • 5G

  • Strasbourg

  • Telecommunications