Pascal Perez, a specialist in business conversion and local development, shares his views on the sale and future of the Condat paper mill. Located in Le Lardin-Saint-Lazare, Dordogne, spanish group Lecta's glassine plant has been on sale since October 2025 .
For several years, Pascal Perez worked as a public affairs consultant on energy issues for Condat.
"Condat: goodbye financiers, welcome shareholders with a passion for industry.
Leading financiers CVC Capital Partners, Tikehau, Apollo, Bain Capital, BC Capital and others, less well known, appear to be failing in the specialty papers sector, such as labels. Fedrigoni has lost half its last valuation. And Lecta is now worth less than its debts.
Condat's uncertain future in 2026 is indicative of a transition: out with the financiers, in with the industrialists.
Since its takeover by Saint-Gobain in 1998, the Condat paper mill, located between Périgueux and Brive-la-Gaillarde, has had only financial shareholders.
CVC Capital Partners was the reference shareholder from 1998 to 2020. But CVC was diluted when Lecta was unable to meet a bond maturity. Since 2020, Condat has been owned by Tikehau (which manages 50 billion euros) and Apollo (840 billion dollars), following the conversion of bonds into shares.âeuros¨CVC Capital Partners must be credited with the great merit of keeping Condat alive: of the five coated paper producers in France, only Condat remains.
But today the Condat paper mill is up for sale. And it's of interest to independent industrialists who are resurrecting the remains of large mills on the one hand, and paper manufacturers on the other.
However, if Condat is to be viable for an independent industrial company, it will have to write off its debts and pay a ticket of 15 million euros to finance a probable redundancy plan and cover the environmental risks of a 120-year-old site.
Xianhe, the Chinese stationer from Le Hénan, can see Conda t, in the Aquitaine wood-paper ecosystem, a nugget of the future for producing innovative papers sold all over Europe.
Who will payâeuros?
The blind ecological dogmatism of governments since 2013, when EDF ended its obligation to purchase electricity, has forced Condat to change steam boilers. This does nothing for paper production, and this diktat has weakened Condat. The vital priority was to mobilize all resources on product innovation.
With 50 million euros spent in vain, including the Ademe subsidy, on the new boiler, Condat could have further diversified its paper production. It would be as profitable as plants of comparable size in baking papers, for example.
It would be healthy if Kyotherm of the Infravia fund, which financed the useless new Condat boiler, lost its 35 million euro claim.
It would be fair for the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region to convert its 5.5 million claim into shares. As a reminder, the region modernized Condat by lending 19 million euros, eyes closed in 2020.
The Minister of the Economy, Roland Lescure, is a liberal financier. The Délégation aux restructurations industrielles (DIRE) lets nature take its course as long as there is no popular revolt.
However, the Ministry of the Economy can threaten Tikehau and Apollo so that they succeed in continuing the paper business. Tikehau and Apollo need agreements or favorable assessments from Bercy to do their corporate shopping in France. In Condat, Tikehau and Apollo are playing up their image as socially and environmentally responsible funds.
I'm optimistic that the phase of de-industrialization, under the aegis of financiers praised by blissful civil servants, will come to an end. And welcome to the rebuilding phase, led by French or Chinese leaders with a passion for industry.
Why isn't the Agence des participations de l'Ãtat proactive in this industrialâeuros project? Were the elected representatives not right to propose the temporary renationalization of Condat in 2023? They were right to doubt Lecta and to believe in industrial bids.
But Condat could well disappear. What does the future of Dordogneâeurosâ?? families, territory, social cohesion and environment depend on? On everyone's pressure to ensure that financial shareholders who have gone bankrupt are dignified."
