How Michelin wants to remain the Auvergne locomotive

The time when Michelin had 28,000 employees – in the 1970s – is certainly over. But the one where the firm in Bibendum, with 15,000 jobs, asserts itself as a driving force for local and regional development by opening up to other partners is only just beginning. To embody this new deal, the Clermont manufacturer, still the largest private employer in the basin, is tackling the conversion of its oldest site. At the gates of the city center of Clermont-Ferrand, Cataroux, once a bastion of tire manufacturing, is beginning its transformation under the sign of openness, through a 200 million project. Initiated last year, it must be completed in 2025.

“When Florent Menegaux [le président du groupe, NDLR] asked me to work on the conversion of Cataroux, he asked me to define a program for the benefit of the basin of Clermont and Auvergne”, relates Pascal Couasnon, the manager of the Parc Cataroux program. Surrounded by around thirty economic and institutional actors, in particular communities, universities, representatives of innovation and the economic world, the latter identified two areas of this work. The first, already well advanced, revolves around lifelong learning, with the training centers of the Manufacture des Talents and Hall 32. The second will be devoted to innovation. It will host Turing 22, the flagship space for Clermont coworking, to which will be added a “coliving” offer of catering and meeting places.