Publication of the first industrial barometer by the Direction Générale des Entreprises

The Direction Générale des Entreprises has just published its first industrial barometer 📊, which consists mainly - for the moment - of an indicator of factory openings 🚀 and closures 🚧. As the publisher of a similar index, we obviously compared the result with great interest 🕵️.

𝗠𝗲́𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀

The indicator Trendeo indicator takes into account site openings and closures where manufacturing, energy production/distribution 🔋 or waste treatment/recycling activities are carried out ♻️ - it was incorrectly stated that our data includes warehouses and services.

Furthermore, we only take into account sites - created or closed - with a minimum of 10 employees 👥. The DGE, in its press release, makes no mention of size criteria.

The Ministry counts actual site openings and closures, whereas we count announcements 📢, which can be 12 to 36 months in advance (even if, for most projects, they are completed within 12 months of their announcement).

Structurally, the Ministry indicator must therefore lag behind ours 🐢🐇. It reflects the mood of investors 12 to 24 months ago. In this, the two indices are rather complementary 👯.

We source our data from the press as a whole, the Ministry has instead mobilized public databases (various permits).

Finally, the Ministry has accounted for site extensions and capacity reductions, which we also account for but without including them in our usual Usines index - we have therefore created an "extended" Trendeo Usines indicator 📈, for the exercise.

𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗿𝗲́𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘀

For the moment, we note that, for the strict indicator, the data are fairly close in order of magnitude 🤏. For the extended indicator, the Trendeo index is more optimistic 😊. The gap between strict and extended index is narrower for the DGE data (the extended index is 4 times greater than the strict one for the DGE, and 6 to 10 times greater in the Trendeo data).

On trend, however, the evolution of the DGE indicators in 2023 is very positive compared with 2022 📈, whereas the Trendeo indicators are rather trending downwards 🔻. This may reflect a design lag, between announcements (Trendeo) and actual commissioning or closures (DGE). In fact, the DGE notes a slowdown between the first and second half of 2023 📉.

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻

We'll see over time how these gaps evolve. In any case, it's a very good sign that interest in the industry is leading the State to develop its own indicators 🔍. We will continue to produce our index, whose definition is unchanged since 2009, and to offer our users full details of announcements, our Usine du Futur rating 🏭, amounts invested 💰, jobs, company names and locations 🌍....

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An article in L'Usine Nouvelle gives a clarification we didn't have: the DGE has taken a threshold of 20 jobs for its strict indicator, and 50 for its extended indicator (with exceptions for sites created by a new company, or extensions of more than 40% of existing capacity). The Trendeo indicators recalculated with these new thresholds are even closer in level for 2022, with a still divergent orientation in 2023.