320 jobs under threat with closure of Belgian-owned gearbox factory
The Belgian Dumarey group intends to close its factory in Strasbourg that manufactures gearboxes for cars, French press agency AFP reports. The closure will mean the loss of 320 jobs by the end of the year.
“The factory is ceasing operations,” Malek Kirouane of the CGT union told AFP on Thursday. “This means the loss of 320 direct employees. I’m not counting indirect employees because we also have contractors. The impact will be enormous.”
The president of Dumarey Powerglide Strasbourg, Arnaud Bailo, confirmed to Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace that the closure “is becoming inevitable and is being imposed on us” in the context of a “major structural crisis” in the automotive sector.
Three waves of redundancies are due to take place in 2026, according to Kirouane: around 100 on 1 June, 200 on 1 August and the remainder at the end of the year. “We had people in tears in front of us” when the news was announced to employees on Wednesday, he said.
"The factory is ceasing operations … The impact will be enormous"
More than 200 jobs were cut at Dumarey Powerglide as part of a restructuring programme in 2024. The factory suffered following the expiry of a contract for producing automatic gearboxes for the German supplier ZF, resulting in an 84 per cent drop in turnover.
The company, which belongs to the Belgian Dumarey group – formerly Punch – has historically produced components and gearboxes for automotive equipment manufacturers.
Entrepreneur Guido Dumarey, from West Flanders, was previously in the running as a potential buyer of the defunct Flemish bus manufacturer Van Hool, which was eventually bought by Dutch group VDL.
#FlandersNewsService | Union action against job cuts at Dumarey Powerglide Strasbourg, November 2024 © PHOTO PQR / DNA / THOMAS TOUSSAINT
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