Sector News

Tereos reaches pay deal to end French sugar plant strike

October 22, 2015
Consumer Packaged Goods

(Reuters) – France’s biggest sugar group, Tereos, said on Wednesday that work would resume at its French plants after it reached a pay settlement with unions to end a week-long strike that has disrupted production.

The strike had put a question mark over this year’s production season, when Tereos plans to process about 15 million tonnes of sugar beet, or nearly half the French crop.

The company said activity was returning to normal after it reached an agreement with the CFDT, CGT and FO unions, which launched the strike over pay.

“The protocol signed today notably sets the figures for the salaries raise as follows: 1.1 percent for general wage increase and 0.3 percent for individual wage increase,” Tereos said in a statement.

Thierry Bailleu, representative for the CFDT union at Tereos, told Reuters earlier that the deal offered a 2 percent increase in overall pay terms.

Workers would resume normal shifts on Thursday, an official at the CGT union said, after staging partial stoppages since Oct. 15 to demand a pay increase higher than an overall 1.1 percent rise previously offered by the company.

The strike disrupted production at nine plants, but Tereos said manufacturing facilities had kept on processing beet sugar.

Tereos, a cooperative group owned by 12,000 farmers, is one of the world’s largest producers of sugar and ethanol.

The company launched its annual production run on Sept. 22, and Bailleu said it was taking in about 140,000 tonnes of just-harvested sugar beet a day. (Reporting by Valerie Parent, additional reporting by Gus Trompiz, Editing by Bate Felix and Pravin Char)

comments closed

Related News

March 24, 2024

Aldi’s new flat and stackable wine bottles “make light work of heavy shopping baskets”

Consumer Packaged Goods

Collaborating with Packamama, Aldi has rolled out the “UK’s first” supermarket own-brand flat wine bottles within its Chapter & Verse label. The recyclable ergonomic packaging concept is made from 100% recycled PET (rPET) and available for shiraz and chardonnay options.

March 24, 2024

Health, sustainability, and a taste for adventure drive snacking behaviors: Mondelēz State of Snacking report

Consumer Packaged Goods

For the fifth year in a row, global consumers expressed a preference for snacking over traditional meals, with six in 10 consumers saying they’d rather eat several small meals throughout the day than a few large ones, according to the fifth annual State of Snacking report from Mondelēz International. Nearly nine in 10 (88%) consumers snack daily.

March 24, 2024

Shareholders challenge Nestlé to increase sales of healthy foods

Consumer Packaged Goods

The shareholders are urging Nestlé to set a target to boost the proportion of its sales from healthier products amid concerns regarding regulatory, reputational and legal risks faced by the company, as well as the public health implications “associated with an over-reliance on less healthy foods”.

How can we help you?

We're easy to reach