Papeteries du Léman (PDL) resumed operations on Wednesday at noon. Located in Publier in Haute-Savoie, the plant specializes in the production of fine papers weighing 10 to 60 g/m 2 , had been forced to halt production after a high-voltage transmission tower was sabotaged.
The electricity transmission system operator discovered on Monday morning that three of the pylon?s legs had been sawed off. While residential customers served by Enedis had their power restored quickly, the outage lasted until Tuesday evening for PDL and the Evian bottling plant, owned by Danone, both of which are connected to that line.
A Prolonged Restart for the Paper Mill
The restoration of power did not allow production to resume immediately. "We weren't able to resume production until Wednesday at noon; it's not easy to restart a heavy industry operation like ours." , Maxime Helstroffer, deputy general manager of Papeteries du Léman, which employs 250 people, told AFP.
The paper mill estimates the economic impact of this disruption at 500,000 euros. In addition to this amount, there is "damage to one's reputation" . "And the very serious consequences this could have had for the safety of our employees" , notes Maxime Helstroffer.
An act of sabotage claimed on Indymedia
A text published Tuesday on the anti-globalization website Indymedia claims responsibility for the sabotage, although its authenticity has not been verified. The action is described in the text as being directed against "Europe's largest bottling plant," which "pumps 6 million liters of water under the mountain, each individually wrapped in plastic" and the Thales plant, which "manufactures microchips here to equip the weapons that kill Gazans over there and other living beings elsewhere." The authors add that they would have liked to "harm the nearby paper mill," this "a voracious devourer of trees and a heavy consumer of water," but thought it was protected by a dedicated power line, "beyond [their] modest means"...
Papeteries du Léman has filed a complaint.
