Aurélien Fleurot, edited by Laura Laplaud 10:33 am, December 01, 2021
It is a "Refactory". Car manufacturer Renault on Tuesday inaugurated its new used car reconditioning plant. Located on the emblematic Flins site in Yvelines, it should become the first circular economy factory in the automotive sector in Europe. If everything is not yet in place, the used car business is starting to industrialize.
Give your car a second life?
This is the bet of the Renault automotive group.
On its historic site in Flins in the Yvelines, the manufacturer is inaugurating a factory dedicated to the reconditioning of its vehicles.
The idea is quite simple: take a used car and recondition it, that is, refurbish it.
Its objective: to create the first circular economy factory dedicated to the automobile in Europe.
A "Refactory"
Is buying a new car still possible? Too expensive, too polluting, in this context, the used car market is becoming a boon for future customers. Just a year ago, the Renault group presented its savings plan with the closure of three sites: Choisy-le-Roi, the Fonderies de Bretagne and the Dieppe plant. The future of the Flins site then remained uncertain.
But a few months later, hundreds of cars are waiting in the site parking lot.
Here, the cars go through a check-up: oil change, painting, bodywork, shower and photo shoot before returning to the dealership.
What to gain in productivity, as explained Ivan Segal, director of commerce at Renault.
"Here you have a vehicle on which we have renovated the aluminum rims, we have processes with teams who know how to do it in a qualitative way," he explains.
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"In a dealership, a dealership may have to go through a service provider or completely change the aluminum rims," he adds. The used vehicle activity has given Flins a new chance. "We had the urgency and the challenge of finding a solution and inventing something," said Luca De Meo, Renault's general manager. “Today, we are in the line of the used version but if you walk around the whole site, there are a lot of things happening on the right, on the left”. If 700 people work today in this reconditioning plant, they will be 3,000 by 2030, assures Luca De Meo, who already imagines a turnover of one billion euros.
The Aveyron company of metallurgy (Sam), which employs 350 people, was placed in compulsory liquidation on September 16.
Historical partner of this foundry, Renault did not wish to support the project of this takeover, not "reliable enough", explained the manufacturer, who will nevertheless make a gesture for the employees as announced by its president Jean-Dominique Sénard: "We are going to look with the legal representatives on how we can accompany the retraining and possible financial support for the Sam teams. We clearly intend to do what is necessary to ensure that this story ends as well as possible."