Iconic French tableware brand Duralex is joining a growing array of European firms that are reducing and halting production because of soaring energy costs provoked by Russia's war in Ukraine.
LA CHAPELLE-SAINT-MESMIN, France — For the glassmakers at iconic French tableware brand Duralex, the mornings have become a horror show. Daily updates from energy traders drop into their email inboxes, showing the asphyxiating upward climb of prices for the natural gas and electricity that power their energy-devouring business.
With energy costs burning through the firm's cash reserves and viability, Duralex President José-Luis Llacuna is taking radical but, he hopes, business-saving action: He's stopping production. The thunderous machines that turn incandescent blobs of molten glass into hundreds of thousands of tableware items each day will fall silent for a few months on Nov. 1.
“Needless to say, there’s an incredible amount of volatility," he added."It's truly a rollercoaster, and the outlook for the future is a complete unknown.” The production shutdown will last at least four months. The glass furnace can’t be switched off entirely because that could destroy it. Instead, it will be maintained in a hot slumber, slashing the firm’s energy use by half. The aim is to then fire it back up by the spring.
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