To see the Verkor gigafactory, you have to drive to the back of the large seaport of Dunkirk (north), pass by the ArcelorMittal steelworks, go past the aluminium production plant, then by the container ship unloading dock (which could soon double in length) and turn your back on the site that will house two European pressurised reactors in Gravelines. Before our eyes rises an immense parallelepiped of grey concrete. It is installed behind the factory of the Belgian group Clarebout, which processes potatoes into crisps or dehydrated flakes.
Huge is no empty word. The Verkor factory, which will assemble future batteries currently intended for Alpine passenger cars and Renault FlexEVan utility vehicles, covers an area of 80 hectares. “Construction began in 2023.explains David Lefranc, director of planning and environment at the port of Dunkirk, who is leading the visit. It is the longest building in France. » For those who doubt its size, Verkor’s infrastructure director, Sylvain Paineau, one of the start-up’s six co-founders, insists: “It is eighteen times Notre-Dame de Paris.”
In November 2023, there was nothing on the site, just an embankment. In December 2023 and January, the first precast concrete pillars arrived in an exceptional convoy. Today, in the factory divided into seven compartments, the machines are starting to be delivered. One of them will be 100 metres long. The employees work nearby, in a house adjacent to the construction site, in the town of Bourbourg. A new roundabout has just been put into operation and, since 2 September, shuttles have been running to the site. The trip is free, like all public transport in Dunkirk. In the three “large industrial zones” of the port, the factories will be left without parking. “We must reduce the number of kilometers traveled by private carsays Patrice Vergriete, president of the Dunkirk Urban Community (CUD) and Minister of Transport, who has since resigned. We have provided parking facilities, offering numerous services, where everyone can leave their car, end up by bus and reduce the cost of their journey. »
“Long-term vision”
Sixteen thousand people are currently employed at the port. With the new activities developed around batteries, twenty thousand more are to be completed. Not only will there be the Verkor factory, but a little further away, the gigafactory of Taiwanese ProLogium, which has reserved 140 hectares. Its environmental study has been completed, the first phase of consultation supervised by the National Commission for Public Debate, and the public consultation will end on October 3. ProLogium hopes to obtain the construction permit by the end of the year. “with a view to laying the first stone in April 2025”According to a company spokesperson, the promised investment amounts to 5.2 billion euros and will result in three thousand direct jobs. “If everyone came with their own car, we would soon be in Grenoble!”Paineau jokes, referring to the traffic jams that clog the Isère prefecture, where Verkor was born and perfected its technology on a pilot line.
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