Paris (AFP)

The shock wave of the coronavirus crisis is starting to be felt in the aeronautical sector: the equipment supplier Daher announced Thursday that it plans to cut up to 1,300 permanent jobs as part of a restructuring plan.

These cuts were announced at a social and economic committee to launch negotiations on the job protection plan (PSE). They will be added to the non-renewal of the vast majority of the 1,400 temporary contracts that the company had before the crisis.

This group, founded in 1863 and controlled by the Daher family (87.5% of the capital and 12.5% ​​for Bpifrance), has 10,000 employees worldwide, including nearly 8,000 in France.

With the stopping of air transport, which will take several years to go up the slope, and the cascading effect on aircraft production rates, the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic is brutal for the equipment supplier: 60 % of its activity depends on the different branches of Airbus.

For 2020, the group estimates "between 300 and 400 million" euros in loss of turnover, initially expected at 1.350 billion, according to its director general Didier Kayat. And therefore an operational loss is to be expected, while "it has never happened in almost 25 years of losing money".

"The crisis is serious, it is deep, and if we do not put in place a restructuring plan, it is not viable," he told AFP.

Its activity as an aircraft manufacturer was also affected, with Daher expecting only 40 deliveries of its single-engine TBM in 2020, compared to 48 last year.

If the group has secured its treasury by benefiting in particular from a loan guaranteed by the State of 170 million euros, it is faced with an "overcapacity of production" which will continue.

"Tomorrow, we will start fighting again with the Americans, with the Chinese, at low labor costs, so we will have to be competitive," he pleaded.

- Jobs to save -

The negotiations that have started on the PES concern the abolition of a "global workforce of 1,300 potential full-time equivalents (FTEs)", details Mr. Kayat.

If "the minimum of this PSE" is "500 to 600 positions", the group hopes to save a maximum of the "700 to 800" remaining positions thanks to state support measures, in particular via its plan to support the aeronautical sector .

Research and development programs, which were planned to be postponed as a cost-saving measure, could thus benefit from public funding, thereby preserving jobs and innovation, such as the EcoPulse hybrid aircraft demonstrator developed with Airbus and Safran.

Daher also hopes to take advantage of possible advance purchases by the Air Force of liaison aircraft to replace some of its 27 TBMs.

It counts especially on the device of partial activity of long duration (APLD) announced Wednesday by the president Emmanuel Macron.

"We should look here for a few hundred jobs that we could preserve, because it is skills that we preserve, it will cost the State less to have people in partial activity than people who are unemployed and it will make less social drama for the people concerned, "hopes Didier Kayat.

The group, which has already cut 400 jobs in the United States, Mexico and Morocco, also intends to "disengage" and look for a buyer for one of its French factories, that of Saint-Julien-de-Chédon (Loir -and-Expensive). This site, which employs 300 people, specializes in composite materials.

"We are going to mandate a firm specializing in the resumption of industrial sites to perpetuate industrial activity in the department and limit the impact on employment," explained Mr. Kayat, who said he had "already had marks of interests of equipment manufacturers ".

While the crisis weakens a very fragmented aeronautical industrial fabric, the boss of Daher is counting on the effects of the restructuring plan in order to be able to further strengthen himself in certain activities (fuselage and engine structures): "there is clearly consolidation in do it and we fit in there. "

© 2020 AFP