Thanks to the rise of "made in France", companies in the textile sector are raising their heads after many years of slaughter.

The number of jobs is even rising slowly, while large-scale retailers are now placing orders with French companies. 

REPORTAGE

Is French textiles raising their heads?

After years of relocating factories to Asia, the trend of "consuming locally", amplified in recent months by the coronavirus crisis, seems to be causing a revival in the sector.

"Made in France" is trendy, as in the Loire department, a historic clothing basin, where SMEs are automating everything to produce at lower cost, and thus compete with imports.

With the key to a hoped-for restart of employment. 

>>

Find the morning show of the day in replay and podcast here

In the Monts du Forez, for example, in Sainte-Agathe-la-Bouteresse, the weaving machines of the former Marcoux Lafay factory are now running at full speed, after years of slow-moving activity. Everything started up again after the takeover in 2020 by two partners, including Arnaud de Belabre, who is now developing quality Made in France products for mass distribution.

"Today, with the Covid, supply difficulties, transport costs, the wish that we see is really to re-propose items produced locally", he explains to Europe 1, before to present some pieces.

"You have baby clothes that are produced here. You also have sweaters that will be delivered to Leclerc, to Carrefour .... We really feel a wave of return of made in France, of local production."

"We find our sovereignty"

And this strong trend is also confirmed in the textile basin of Roanne, explains Eric Boel, boss of Tissages de Charlieu, a company which has just signed a big contract with Auchan.

"This is a five-year contract for 10 million fabric checkout bags, which will replace polypropylene bags arriving from Asia," he says.

"We are creating jobs and we are regaining the sovereignty that we have completely lost, as we saw at the time of the masks. And we are dividing our carbon impacts by ten."

For this, the company will invest 22 million euros, especially in machines, and will also double its workforce by recruiting a hundred new employees in the next two years.

Slow growth in the number of jobs

But this return to form of textiles made in France is not limited to the Loire.

There is clearly a national trend.

Since 2016, employment in the textile industry in France has started to grow again after a massacre that lasted ten years.

At its lowest, in 2015, there were only 58,000 jobs in the textile industry in the country.

Today, we are a little above 62,000.

Progress is slow, but it is there, driven by innovation, by orders from the luxury sector, but also by the renewed interest of consumers for made in France.

Imported textiles remain in the majority

Of course, there is still some way to go, when we know that 97.5% of clothing textiles purchased in France are imported textiles. But several recent opinion polls show that in the textile sector too, responsible purchasing is gaining ground, even if you have to pay a little more for that. Hence the orders that are starting to be passed to French companies by mass distribution. When brands like Kiabi, Leclerc or Carrefour get started, it's really not a fad.