Commercial court of Annecy postpones its decision on buying offers for Alpine Aluminium till November 29

Alpine Aluminum, based in Gran-Gevrier, Haute-Savoie, France, which was placed in bankruptcy proceedings in August, received potential buying offers from two buyers. The commercial court of Annecy city, France, which was to decide between the two offers for the recovery of the company on 26 November, postponed its decision to Friday.

The Greek group Cosmos proposed to take over all the 91 employees of Alpine Aluminium and continue the operations. The other takeover offer came from the French holding company Samfi Invest and Industry. It offered to take over 49 employees and proposed to diversify the company's activities in steel.

The Commercial Court meeting on November 26 found that they did not have all the necessary financial information on the group Cosmos. The court said it needed time to examine new elements on the offer of Cosmos, as claimed by employees and management of Alpine Aluminum. The court therefore ordered the reopening of the proceedings. Employees are happy with the court decision as this would give judges time to study the strength of the offer of the Greek group Cosmos.

On 19 November, the judges ruled in favour of this French bid for lack of financial information on the Cosmos offer. The employees and the management of Alpine Aluminium filed a petition in the court to reconsider both the offers. On November 23, about sixty employees of the Alpine Aluminum protested in front of the Haute-Savoie prefecture to express their concern and publicly showed their support for the Greek candidate Cosmos Aluminum.

Founded more than 150 years ago, Alpine is a manufacturer of aluminium sheet and plates, which was sold by Alcan in 2006 to the American investment fund Aiac. But victim of a swindle on the part of its former president, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy. Some 45 employees then took over the company for an investment of 10.5 million euros and it became a worker’s production cooperative (SCOP).

Alpine slowed down its production significantly this year due to technical reason. In July, there was an explosion in an oven followed by an accidental death. Operations were stopped for security reasons and Alcan Aluminum was forced to turn to the commercial court.