The last thermal engines were assembled this summer: after more than 50 years of production, the Stellantis factory in Douvrin shut down for good this Friday

After having produced tens of millions of thermal engines for more than 50 years, the Stellantis factory in Douvrin (Pas-de-Calais), formerly French Mechanical, definitively ceased its activity on Friday, thus closing with it a part of French automotive history. Stellantis had announced this closure date during an extraordinary CSE in July, when the transfer of factory employees had already been underway for several years. The site had stopped assembling engines this summer but "continued machining activities for other factories in the group", marginal production which ended on Friday in turn, Stellantis explained to AFP.

In 2023, Automotive Cells Company (ACC), a joint venture between Stellantis, TotalEnergies and Mercedes-Benz, inaugurated the first French electric battery factory in the immediate vicinity of the thermal engine factory in Douvrin. “This establishment made it possible to support employees in the electrical professions thanks to a dedicated training center,” underlined the manufacturer, according to which nearly 350 former Douvrin employees have joined ACC since the creation of the gigafactory. All former employees of the factory "today have a professional solution thanks to a support agreement concluded with the responsible trade union organizations", according to Stellantis.

In addition to the professional retraining of certain workers towards the electrical sector, "this system allowed mobility to the Stellantis sites in Valenciennes and Hordain, departures at the end of their career and mobility leave to other employers", further detailed the automobile group. “The closure destroys hundreds of jobs” The CGT of the Stellantis group, however, denounced on Friday “a disguised relocation”, under the cover of the “energy transition”. “The manufacture of thermal engines, previously carried out in Douvrin, is not stopped, but transferred to other factories, in France and elsewhere in Europe,” criticized the union in a press release.

For the CGT, “the closure of this industrial site is a financial choice which destroys hundreds of direct and indirect jobs in Pas-de-Calais”. For its part, Stellantis assures that it has “kept its commitment to locally recreate jobs linked to the activity” of the Douvrin factory, which still had around 1,500 employees in 2021, stressing that ACC currently employs “nearly 2.

000 employees". Founded in 1969 under the name Française de Mécanique by Peugeot and Renault, the factory experienced its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, before beginning a slow decline. In 2013, Renault withdrew from the factory, which since 2021 was called Stellantis Douvrin.

Machine-translated from French