Meccano: Last factory in Europe producing iconic children’s construction toys to close | Business News
The only factory in Europe that makes the iconic British construction toy brand Meccano is set to close.
The factory in Calais, France, will close in the first quarter of next year, leaving 50 workers unemployed, according to a French report.
Meccano’s parent company, Spin Master, is said to have blamed “tough market conditions” and “increasing raw material and energy costs” for the decision.
In a statement to French channel BFM TV, the Canadian company said: “After studying all possible alternatives, management currently has no choice but to consider suspending operations. industrial capacity of the Calais plant in the first quarter of 2024.”
Spin Master has invested €7m (£6.1m) since 2014 to “improve the site’s industrial performance and competitiveness”.
However, cash “unfortunately is not enough to remedy the situation in the long run”, the statement added.
But French politician Pierre-Henri Dumont described the decision as “unacceptable”.
“Meccano is Calais’s story. We have to do everything to keep the site running,” he tweeted.
Former French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal said the “disappearance” of the “icon” factory was “sad”, as she praised “educational toys that develop dexterity”.
“Fight for solutions,” she added.
Former Socialist Party First Secretary Martine Aubry (centre) at the Calais factory in 2010
According to BFM TV, around 4 million boxes of metal or plastic parts – equivalent to a third of the brand’s products – are produced at the factory each year.
A job protection plan is expected to be announced next March.
The Spin Master statement added: “Management’s goal now is to provide individualized support to each of the 50 employees involved.
“In this sense, it will soon enter into negotiations with social partners to determine the terms of a job protection plan to promote a speedy return to work.
“Ultimately, it will naturally remain open to all proposals from potential buyers.”
Sky News has reached out to Spin Master for further comment.
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The Calais factory was built in 1959, more than 50 years after the first Meccano kits were invented by Frank Hornby in England in 1898.
In 2000, the brand merged and started building with a similar construction toy brand, Erector, founded in the US in 1913 by Alfred Carlton Gilbert.
