Delpierre – which is owned by one of Europe’s largest smoked salmon producers Labeyrie Fine Foods – wants to move it from Alsace, to other parts of the country.
In July, SalmonBusiness reported that that one of France’s main salmon processors was is in the process of restructuring and that production of its high end smoked salmon range at Wisches.
The site will now be transferred to one or even two existing factories in the group.
Wisches’s salmon smoker, which will still operate until the end of the year, has 150 workers but employed up to 300 during busy seasons.
France Blue reports that Labeyrie Fine Foods is considering restructuring the Wisches plant into its Saint-Geours-de-Maremne site, Southwestern France, and/or Fécamp, in the North.
The publication reported that the shift in operations is to improve its thin margins in the face of competition from labour-cheap Poland.
A spokesperson for Delpierre told FranceBlue:
“It is becoming more and more difficult to maintain its activities on a site where there are many new investments to be made, especially on the smoking plant, so rather than doing it on several sites, do it only the sites that we have also, reduces costs and gives us the opportunity to continue its production in France.”
The site opened in 1989 but in 2015 employees had to accept a wage freeze to in an effort save EUR 800,000 to maintain the plant and jobs after a couple of loss-making years. In 2016, Delpierre even invested EUR 4 million into the struggling processing plant.
