The commercial court of Lille has chosen the Alkor group to take over the French office supplies specialist Office Depot France, which has been in receivership since last February. Several takeover bids had been submitted. Alkor has undertaken to take over 460 employees out of 1500 and to offer 370 additional jobs. The group has also specified that other jobs will be opened in 2022 as part of the priority given to Office Depot employees for 2 years.
Created in 1958, Alkor is a cooperative in the stationery, office and school supplies sector with the Majuscule, Burolike, Ioburo and Office Depot brands. The group has a turnover of 440 million euros with 1850 employees.
"We maintain the Office Depot brand, as well as the social benefits of the employees whose employment contracts are transferred: seniority, paid vacations, RTT, 13th month. Finally, we participate in the payment of the creditors up to 23,2 Meuros (that is to say 9 M euros more than the competing offer), without public money, nor PGE, nor investment funds. Today, we call all the employees of Office Dépôt to mobilize to answer en masse to the offers which will be announced, in order to save a maximum of jobs of Office Dépôteuros" said Stéphane Couchot, president of the Alkor Group, in an open letter to Office Depot employees.
But for the trade unionist Sébastien Fournier, General Secretary of Unsa Office Depot France, this is not the time to celebrate.
"It is a social carnage. 1,000 employees who will lose their jobs despite more than two years of fighting to avoid the disaster voluntarily caused by our German shareholder Aurelius under the eyes of the government, and despite our alerts euros" he said in a message sent to AFP.
