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 Now he wants to know how the government will shield him from cheap
imports once the COVID-19 crisis subsides.
Nizard's startup "Le Masque Francais" employs 50 staff, churns out 1
million masks per week and counts Macron as a client. But the
entrepreneur told Reuters the industry would be left fighting for
its survival once demand for masks fell.
The challenges faced by Nizard's company show how hard it will be
for Western governments to achieve their objectives of being
self-sufficient in public health equipment supplies after being
caught out at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when they had to
scramble to import from Asia.
"Companies that launched production will be confronted by Chinese
masks that are unbeatable in terms of price," Nizard said at his
plant in Velizy-Villacoublay near Paris.
France suffered acute shortages of protective gear when the virus
first tore across France last spring. Macron urged the repatriation
of supply chains for strategic goods.
France held just 117 million surgical masks in strategic reserves
and no high-filtration FFP2 masks when the pandemic struck. Those
reserves now hold some 1.7 billion masks - enough to last several
months should another epidemic break out.
PRICE VS GUARANTEES
Higher labour charges mean it costs about 0.10 euro to produce a
mask in France compared with a minimum of 0.06 euro in China, said
Christian Curel, head of the industry's main union, who has been
involved in talks with the government.
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 The number of mask
manufacturers in France has risen five-fold to
20. But four in every five masks were still
imported from China and buyers needed to be
given a reason to purchase locally, Curel said.
Some manufacturers like Nizard want cheap
imports to be taxed more.
"If China was hit by the pandemic again, it's
obvious we'd face another shortage," Curel said.
Curel said the government planned to alter the
formulation of tenders so that buyers such as
public hospitals would not just consider unit
price but also environmental cost and
implications for supply security.
An official familiar with the talks between government and mask
manufacturers confirmed the strategy. Help could also come in the
form of securing access to raw materials, he said.
The official said the target was to produce 40 million masks per
week in France once the pandemic was over, compared with 100 million
now.
Mask manufacturers acknowledge they will not all survive. They also
said the crisis had underlined the shortage of skilled labour in
France's manufacturing industry.
Gerard Heuliez, managing director of mask maker Kolmi-Hopen, said he
had hired 170 additional staff last spring to ramp up production
ten-fold to 3.5 million masks per day.
"We've lost the savoir faire in our value chain, but must build it
back up," Heuliez said.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by
Mike Collett-White)
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