How to use relocation in France

This is the big word of the moment: relocation. But what is the user manual? Can we really bring our factories and our jobs back to France? 

If we ask the question to our industrialists, to those who have not left, who continue to manufacture in France, they are very clear. I am thinking of Seb, world number one in small household electrical appliances, the inventor of the pressure cooker, and who always produces in France, in his Burgundy factory in Is-sur-Tille, "l'Actifry", this fryer without oil, which sells millions of copies worldwide. 

How do we make in France? Answer: you have to accept not wanting to do everything in France. Entry-level products must be manufactured abroad. And in France, to justify the higher wages, we have to make higher-end products. It is very clear in the automobile. The Peugeot 208 is manufactured in Slovakia. The 3008 is manufactured in France in Sochaux. 

But, precisely Axel, I sent you an email last week from an auditor who pointed out that Toyota was able to have the little Yaris manufactured in France, in its factory in Valenciennes. Proof that we can manufacture entry-level models in France. 

Yes, but this Valenciennes factory is ultra-modern, highly automated, and that's the key. If you want to manufacture in France, you have to rely on technology (product technology or assembly line technology). 

This is why the idea of ​​relocations is not to bring the production of plastic bumpers back to France. But rather to ensure that new technologies, in the electric car for example (batteries), are well located in France. 

And in drugs? How to bring the production of medicines back to France?

Well, maybe we should already make sure that our best researchers don't leave. You have seen that this American laboratory, Moderna, which received $ 500 million from the American administration to produce a vaccine, is headed by a Frenchman, Stéphane Bancel. A Centralian, who went through Bio-Mérieux, and who went to the United States, to Boston, where there is more funding, more research, and perhaps also a bolder state of mind. 

In France, let's face it, we always look with suspicion at these eccentric geo-finds. We see it in medicine, we also see it in Space. In Europe, with the Ariane rocket, we pride ourselves on having the safest launcher in the world, which never explodes. But hey, nothing to raise the crowds. In the United States, Elon Musk, whose rockets have already exploded, talks about conquering the Moon, and even Mars. What a dream. This is called having the conquering spirit.