World’s last dedicated Meccano toy factory to close next year in France
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Generations of children have built mechanical devices using Meccano model construction kits.
PHOTO: AFP
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LILLE, France - The owners of the world’s last dedicated Meccano toy factory have said it will close by 2024 after more than half a century in France because of rising costs.
Canadian multinational toy and entertainment company Spin Master said on Wednesday the factory’s falling competitiveness left the company with “no other choice” but to close it down by the first quarter of 2024.
Production at the site, in Calais on the English Channel coast, had been affected by difficult market conditions, made worse by recent increases in the cost of raw materials and energy, it said.
Meccano is a model construction system invented by Briton Frank Hornby in Liverpool at the end of the 19th century, and generations of children have built mechanical devices using the kits.
The Calais Meccano factory opened in 1959 and was taken over by Spin Master in 2014.
The French site is the last factory owned and run by Spin Master for Meccano toys, but the company has also outsourced Meccano production to toy makers in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Spin Master said it would keep ownership of the brand, and “rethink” its further development.
An investment of €7 million (S$10 million) since 2014 has been insufficient to turn the Calais operation around, the company said. It added that negotiations had begun with unions about the conditions for terminating the contracts for the 50 staff employed at the site.
Local politicians were furious at the decision, with Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart calling it “extremely brutal”.
A worker checks toy parts on a production line at the Meccano factory in Calais.
PHOTO: AFP
She told Agence France-Presse that Spin Master’s methods “were not decent in any way”, and the local authorities had been given no advance warning of the move.
Ms Bouchart said that with 2021 sales of “€55 million in France and US$2 billion (S$2.69 billion) worldwide” Spin Master “has the means to absorb higher energy costs”.
The mayor said she wondered what the company’s “true motivations” were, adding that there may still be time to find a buyer for the operation.
Staff are “completely devastated”, union representative Jean-Francois Sandras said.
“We never thought they would close it down for good,” he said. AFP
