Riom site will take Hermès to 22 leathergoods factories in France
Just days after it announced that construction had begun on a new leathergoods factory at Louviers in Normandy, luxury handbag manufacturer Hermès has now said it will build another new factory, this time near Clermont-Ferrand.
The company already has a leathergoods factory in this part of France, the department of Puy-de-Dôme. It employs 260 skilled leather artisans at Sayat, eight kilometres north of Clermont-Ferrand. Hermès has said it now wants to build a facility at Riom, 15 kilometres from there.
It will use the skills-base it has built up at Sayat to train new artisans at Riom and will, in time, create 250 new jobs there. Local reports say a disused tobacco factory in Riom could be an ideal site for Hermès to take over. Tobacco production ceased there in 1975 and, although parts of the building have been converted into apartments, a substantial amount of the space is still empty. The company aims to begin production there in 2023.
Since 2010, Hermès has opened nine new leathergoods factories, creating 2,500 new jobs, taking the total number of leathergoods artisans it employs to 3,600. It is already preparing to open new production sites at Guyenne, near Bordeaux, and at Montereau, south-east of Paris, in 2021. The site at Louviers will follow in 2022 and another in the Ardennes in 2023.
With these the newly announced factory in Riom, Hermès will have a total of 22 artisan leathergoods production sites, all of them in France.
