/regions/2025/01/24/douvrin-6793688b19e24464073441.jpg)
The automaker Stellantis announces the gradual stop of the production of thermal engines on the Douvrin site (Pas-de-Calais). Hundreds of employees must be transferred to the production of batteries. The unions denounce a disguised closure and request a more ambitious conversion plan.
Regional news
Each day, an overview of the main news from all regions.
France Télévisions uses your email address to send you the newsletter “the news of the regions”. You can unsubscribe at any time via the link at the bottom of this newsletter. Our Privacy Policy
This is the end of a fiftieth production in Douvrin (Pas-de-Calais). The announcement was made at an extraordinary meeting of the CSE Stellantis.
The management reported “the stop of the DVR engine assembly for November 1 and the EB (…) engine at the end of 2025 or even in early 2026”, Communicate the CGT. In other words, thermal engines are over.
The group wishes to transfer the hundreds of employees on the site to other sites such as the neighboring Gigafactory ACC, specializing in the production of batteries. But not enough to reassure the unions.
No longer producing thermal engines, “it is an indirect way to announce the closure of the Douvrin site without formalizing it, and this can stop much faster if the management succeeds in emptying the effective of the factory”, continues the CGT.
Same story on the CFE-CGC side side, for whom the “sentence has just fallen”: “The Douvrin site will close its doors in 2026!”
In Douvrin “Stellantis has chosen to set up the first Gigafactory ACC” in the immediate vicinity, which produces batteries for the automobile, “of which Stellantis is the main shareholder, by promoting the transitions from one site to the other,” said a company spokesperson to AFP.
The ACC factory of Douvrin near Lens has produced batteries since the beginning of 2024. • © FTV
“The local production of thermal engines will gradually stop to promote transfers to other activities. In this context, we know how to offer a position to everyone in the group,” he said. 330 ex-Stellantis Douvrin employees have already joined Gigafactory.
In addition to ACC, Stellantis says he wants to support his employees to other group sites in the region, including Hordain and Valenciennes.
/regions/2020/06/09/5edfa6687da00_maxnewsworldthree505798-4734086.jpg)
The PSA factory in Douvrin. Archive. • © Photopqr/Le Parisien
But this discourse does not reassure union representatives, they require guarantees of reclassifications in good conditions. The CGT speaks of a “starting plan at a discount”, considered by some as “an insult to the elders who have given a lot for the box”.
The CFE-CGC recalls that there are still 350 employees to be supported before the site is closed, and pleads for “an ambitious professional retraining policy, a clear and transparent training plan, as well as a reinforced reclassification system”. The emphasis must be placed on “individual support” and “adapted to each situation”.
The union paints the portrait of a scuttled know-how, “thus sacrificing nearly two hundred years of industrial skills accumulated by our colleagues”. Expertise to rebuild for the production of batteries, therefore.