They're the only things you see at the parking lot of the Hôtel Saint-Hubert in Hambach, northeastern France: Massive 4 x 4s that are ready for expeditions in inhospitable terrain. These are the Grenadiers from Ineos manufactured a few kilometers away at the former Smart factory, which was bought from Mercedes in December 2020 by the British petrochemical group to fulfill the dream of its owner and founder, Jim Ratcliffe. Three years earlier, Sir Jim – Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 2018 – vowed to launch a model inspired by the Defender, the rustic off-roader favored by the sovereign. The Jaguar Land Rover group decided to stop its production in favor of a more urban, chic and expensive version.
The car's name comes from the London pub where the project was born. In 2023, the dream of the UK's richest man (according to Forbes magazine) has now become a reality. Every five minutes, a massive 4x4 rolls off the Hambach assembly line, which Ineos Automotive presented to a group of journalists on July 26. The site is currently looking for 400 additional employees to run two teams working day and night shifts. In total, 1,600 people, including logistics and temporary staff, already work on the 210,000-square-meter site.
Philippe Steyer, the company's managing director, is pleased by this state of affairs. Steyer, whose two grandfathers used to work as miners some ten kilometers away, had been living in the United States for a year when the sale of the Hambach site was announced. He was managing two Mercedes plants, one in Alabama and the other in Mexico. "For me, this sale was a very big disappointment," he recalled. Between 2015 and 2016, as HR director at the French plant, he battled to convince employees and their unions to agree to work 39 hours but only be paid for 37, with one objective: To become one of the Daimler group's most competitive sites in order to win the production of a new model.
The strategy worked. In May 2018, the company's CEO, Dieter Zetsche, came to Paris to announce to Emmanuel Macron that the Hambach plant would manufacture the EQB, an electric compact SUV. "It was the first Mercedes ever made in France," recalled the engineer, who was at the Elysée Palace during the meeting. The German group invested €500 million in the plant, equipped with 250 brand-new Kuka robots, a top-of-the-line paint shop and even three Zeiss machines. Developed by the famous manufacturer of high-precision optics, their aim is to check the quality of vehicles down to the micron, the only ones of their kind in France.
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