Northern industrial Cochez helped aid the emblematic Alsatian company of supermarket trolleys by joining the project to take over the company.
French industrial group Cochez offered to bolster Caddy’s single takeover bid, a last-minute arrival on Friday to fend off the specter of the Alsatian company’s liquidation. According to the revised draft submitted to the Saverne court on Friday, “The Cochez Group will join the project and will acquire 51% of Caddy’s new company,” said current Caddy chief Stéphane Dedieu, who works with Caddy’s Italian distributor and German industrialist taking the remaining 49%. .
At the end of this fourth hearing in Savern Court since January, the Chamber of Commerce decided a new hearing on March 22, to allow time to finalize the financial guarantees of this improved disposition plan. The Cochez family group specializing in transport and industrial services is based in Valenciennes. In 2019, it has already partially acquired lace-makers Desseilles and Noyon, the jewels of the lace-making in Calais.
‘It’s the last deadline’
The three holders of the initial offer on Caddy, and the only one offered, have not succeeded since Caddy was placed in receivership in early January to find the funds to do so on his own. The profile of the offer totaling four million euros remained unchanged with 111 of the current 139 jobs maintained at Dettwiller’s single production site (Bas-Rhin). In addition to the trolley business, Caddy will also develop industrial subcontracting.
“It is the last deadline, and there will be no last,” said Stephane Didio, emphasizing that, given the current geopolitical environment, “it is a recovery that requires a lot of courage.”
“The company is 94 years old, we can wait 94 years and eight days,” said Claude Maxime Weil, one of the company’s legal officials, noting the perseverance of the employees who continue to run the plant. Thierry Carle, deputy secretary of the CSE Commodity Futures Trading Commission and representative of staff in the custodial proceedings, spoke after the hearing, “part of a break.” He hoped that “there are possibilities at the end of the tunnel.”
Exceptional general loan
To continue operating its factory in Dettwiller (Bas-Rhin) and pay wages during receivership, Caddy, 70% owned since 2018 by Poland’s Damix, has benefited from an exceptional public loan of €400,000 from the state and the Grand Est region. The state and territory provided new support, should they recover, in the form of loans. The famous supermarket trolley manufacturer has faced serious financial difficulties for several years
Registered name in 1959, Caddy, whose industrial and Alsatian origins date back to 1928 with wire products, has become a popular name with the rise of the consumer society, inseparable from the metal cart of supermarkets.
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