In Belfort, an association to keep engineering from which GE "is withdrawing"

The Association for the Prefiguration of Integration and Systems Engineering Companies (Apsiis) aims to develop activities (creation of companies, partnerships with groups, etc.) in the engineering of projects in the energy sector. to "perpetuate" and "develop" local employment in this specialty, its founders explained Tuesday.

"It is about anchoring these skills from which General Electric is withdrawing locally" as it restructures to the detriment of Belfort, explained Philippe Petitcolin, CFE-CGC delegate of the group's Belfort site, one of the initiators. of the association with three of its counterparts from the CFE-CGC and Sud unions.

The association hopes to have in the coming months "around thirty members", engineers and executives of GE, local entrepreneurs, consultants, universities, communities, including "a dozen industrialists", specified Mr. Petitcolin.

The engineering group Altran is one of the five member companies mentioned on Tuesday during the presentation of the association to the press, "other groups" having also expressed their interest in this initiative, according to Mr. Petitcolin.

Apsiis targets "two priority areas": hydrogen and nuclear, he added.

Acting "as an incubator", the association intends to transform ideas into "projects ready to be financed", for example to create new companies or to attract to Belfort and its surroundings industrialists from outside the territory, exposed Jean Maillard, engineer-consultant founding member of Apsiis.

The initiative receives support from the public authorities, which is reflected in the presence among its founders of the Regional Economic Agency of Burgundy-Franche-Comté.

At the end of 2020, the mayor of Belfort Damien Meslot estimated that as the various social plans progressed, GE would have cut "more than 1.200 direct jobs" in Belfort out of the 4.300 people on the site in 2015.