This is one of the conclusions of the latest survey conducted by the public investment bank. The phenomenon remains in the minority but is indeed real.
Article written by
Published
Reading time : 1 min.
The movement runs counter to the current debate on the necessary relocation of our companies: relocation to reindustrialize the regions.
Bpifrance Le Lab – a laboratory of ideas for SMEs and ETIs – interviewed 1,400 companies with more than ten employees: 3.5% of them are actually planning to relocate in the next five years, 24% say they are on a wait-and-see position.
As they say, it’s the thought that counts. It is interesting to see what are the reasons why this small proportion of SMEs and ETI plans to look elsewhere. According to Bipfrance Le Lab, it is not the advantageous low labor costs abroad that stand out as the main motivation, but the proximity to customers that is sought as a priority. These customers, outside France, encourage French industrial SMEs and ETIs to relocate and they use the weapon of maintaining good commercial relations. A quarter of the French companies surveyed say they have been encouraged to change scenery over the past five years, mostly to avoid a breach of contract.
The alert is not red but we must question our industrial strategy. But let’s be reassured – and this is the other strong point of this Bpifrance survey -: 85% of industrial SMEs and ETIs surveyed now have all of their production sites in France. 25% of the bosses questioned plan to open new production centers and want to do so in France.
But nothing is won: all sectors combined, the temptation for SMEs to go and settle outside our borders is still very much present. In the background, there is the great weakness of our largely deficit foreign trade. A real food for thought for those who aspire to become, or perhaps remain, heads of state next spring.