Less than a year after it changed hands, the former paper mill of the Arjowiggins group located in Bessé-sur-Braye has a new owner. The sarthe paper mill shut down since March 2019 and taken over in June 2020 by Paper Mill Industries is now owned by Kolmi-Hopen, based in Angers, Maine-et-Loire, the Ministry of Industry announced yesterday.
The company, a subsidiary of the Canadian Medicom Group, will set up a single-use nitrile glove factory on the former paper site. The glove factory, which will operate under the name ManiKHeir, is expected to create 150 to 200 jobs in the first year and more than 300 jobs in the long term.
This project of relocation of production operated mainly in Malaysia "will have a decisive impact on employment in the Bessé-sur-Braye area, which has lost its industrial lifeblood year after year, and which represents a tremendous sign of hope for the entire Sarthe region, which experienced the disappearance of Arjowiggins as a real trauma indicates the office of Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
And if the Kolmi-Hopen group, born from the merger of Kolmi and Hopen in 2005, is today specialized in the medical field, the takeover of a former paper site is like a wink to its beginnings: at its creation in 1921, until 1986, the Kolmi company located in Angers manufactured cigarette paper, the Zig-Zag paper.
