Emmanuel Vasseneixthe boss of LSDH group (St-Denis-de-l’Hôtel dairy, 8 production sites in France for 2,000 employees), takes stock: last year, gas and electricity bill of the group amounted to 10 million euros. It will be 22 million this year, and, according to the latest forecasts, 35 million next year: the equivalent of its annual operating profit!
“The energy crisis is terrible”
“We are priced by the throatdescribes the entrepreneur. Energy, which was our 7th cost item, has become the 2nd, just after labour. The energy crisis is terrible, and for us it is both direct and indirect. Direct is the amount of our electricity and gas bills; but also indirectly, because it also affects our suppliers, and therefore the price of our raw materials.“
Difficult, however, to reduce the energy consumption of the group : “We need electricity or gas in the process of manufacturing or preserving our productsemphasizes Emmanuel Vasseneix, one cannot do without, for example, gas boilers to sterilize milkIt is also difficult to fully pass on the increase to selling prices, at the risk of fueling inflation and losing consumers.
“The State must intervene to regulate energy prices”
In these conditions, the group should see its profits fall by 2/3 this year. This will necessarily have a consequence for employees, because of the group’s own compensation system. “We are a company where we have signed profit-sharing, profit-sharing and even collective retirement plan agreements.Explain Guillaume DesrochesCFDT union representative. But all of this is obviously indexed to the company’s results, so it necessarily impacts us.“
Whether the situation is less serious than at Duralex, the glassworks of La Chapelle St-Mesmin, which announced partial unemployment, it is nonetheless worrying. “The cry of alarm is hereconcludes Emmanuel Vasseneix. If our rulers do nothing to regulate energy prices, there will be dramatic cascading consequences. This is all the more essential since these prices are the results of speculative markets, which have no relation to the real costs of energy production.“