The Geoxia group employed nearly 1,150 people. The major layoff plan, which targets businesses with more than 200 employees, has been activated.
Le Monde with AFP
“Phoenix, so that everyone has their house.” This advertising slogan which marked the 1970s made the Geoxia group, builder of the famous Phoenix houses, a symbol of mass access to the individual house. His model has long overlooked. The Nanterre Commercial Court has placed fourteen companies out of the seventeen of the group in compulsory liquidation, Tuesday, June 28, for lack of buyers of buyers for its activity.
“I believed it until the last minute, it is a bit of the ground which collapses under my feet,” reacted Lucy Grolleau, secretary of the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) of the company . The liquidation “is immediate,” she added, “I asked all employees to leave their workplace”. Geoxia, who achieved a turnover of 252 million euros in 2021, employed nearly 1,150 people.
The major layoff plan, which targets companies with more than 200 employees, has been activated, explained Bercy, “to help employees find a job in a sector that we know in high demand for hand- of work “.
Failing to have access to banking funding, after first difficulties in the late 2000s, the management of Geoxia had struck at the door of the Ministry of the Economy to claim 70 million euros. She had been opposed to an end of inadmissibility.
“The State cannot finance the past and future losses alone, without any shareholder. It can support a buyer but cannot replace a shareholder, decided Bercy. The absence of buyer is the signal Structural difficulties of the company. “
concern for current sites
Nevertheless, we must carry out the current sites. “Phoenix has 300 houses to finish”, which represents three months of work, assured Fernando Cabete Neves, CFTC union delegate. The three factories of the company, which herself manufactured the slabs and frames of its houses, obtained a stay: the State decided to finance their continuation of activity to carry out the ongoing sites, noted the Ministry of the Economy at the Agency France-Presse.
For open sites, insurers will take over, said Bercy, recruiting the workforce and taking charge of late penalties and additional costs. “They are the ones who will contact the insured in the coming days to keep them informed of the next steps to complete their site,” continues the ministry.
fragile economic model
Created in 1946, Maisons Phoenix developed in France thanks to a standardized model of individual houses, quick and inexpensive to build. The group manufactured their framework in its own factories, metal frames, then made ready for construction sites. He had experienced first difficulties in the late 2000s, which had cut him off to banks’ funding.
The rise in real estate prices and the drying up of home ownership aid, which removed modest households from real estate purchase, deprived it of its target heart. And the group failed to go upmarket in time. The health crisis, then the war in Ukraine, as well as the outbreak of the prices of the materials and the energy which accompanied them, carried him the blow of grace.
“With the construction constraints that have been added year after year, the surge in material prices and the increase in land prices, the average customer who buys a house, today, is significantly different from that Who bought five or six years ago, “sums up Damien Hereng, president of the French federation of manufacturers of individual houses.