At the end of 2020, Chargeurs’ workforce reached 2,500 employees, a big jump from the c.2,000 of 2019. Obviously this is owed to acquisitions, mainly the addition of D&P in early 2020. About half (1,083) is European based with the bulk (c.600) in France mainly driven by the Protective Films and Fashion Technologies operations. Chargeurs is keen both to rebalance its geography of production assets (i.e. new plants out of France like the recent production line in Italy) and the need to rejuvenate the French staff after many years of cost cutting.
Pension risks with a c.€17m deficit (mostly European unfunded plans) remain under control with the group using low discount rates (0.25%) to assess its obligations cautiously at least as far as Europe is concerned. The US discount rate at 3.3% seems correspondingly high.
