Hermès opens new leather goods factory in France
There seems to be no stopping Hermès. To meet the sustained demand for its iconic handbags, the luxury label has opened a new production site in France. The Guyenne leather goods factory is Hermès’s 19th, and is located in the village of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, on the Ambès peninsula in the Gironde region.
Hermès recently announced it is opening a training academy for its leather goods artisans, and will eventually create 260 new jobs with the new production facility. “In order to facilitate the staff’s training, mentorship and support, nearly one third of the employees come from the group’s other production sites and artisanal sectors,” said Hermès in a press release.
The new factory is located on a 5.6-hectare site, a former railway embankment depot, by the Bordeaux-Paris motorway, along the banks for the Dordogne river. Its project has been commissioned to French architect Patrick Arotcharen, who has designed a 140-metre-long building made of wood and concrete. It is subdivided in eight separate workshops, where the workers will be “entirely bathed in northern light.”
At the same time, “some 100 trees have been planted, contributing to the site’s full revegetation and to the creation of a garden,” said Hermès, indicating that “the factory is equipped with solar panels that generate over 40% of the total energy consumed, with an illumination system that uses LED lights only, and with a rainwater recycling system for sewage disposal and irrigation.”
Since 2010, Hermès has opened nine leather goods factories in France, bringing the group’s number of leather artisans to over 4,000. The group stated that it is working on three new factory projects in France, in Louviers, Tournes and Riom, where staff hiring and training is under way.
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