Brandt: French Appliance Maker Liquidated, Brands Sold to Cafom

“This is a hard blow to French manufacturing,” said François Bonneau, President of the Centre-Val de Loire region. The Nanterre Economic Affairs Court confirmed on Friday, March 13, an offer of €18.6 million from the Cafom group, a distributor of home equipment in French overseas territories, to acquire the Brandt group’s brands, patents, inventory, and various spare parts, according to a decision reviewed by AFP. The liquidation of the once-prominent French appliance maker was initially ordered in December.

The court considered 36 offers for the assets of the century-aged group encompassing the Brandt, Vedette, Sauter, and De Dietrich brands. Even as some local officials had hoped for an industrial revival that would have reopened factories near Orléans and Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher) and rehired former employees – of which the group once employed around 700 – most proposals focused primarily on stock and spare parts.

The Centre-Val-de-Loire region and the Orléans metropolitan area had expressed continued hope for an industrial turnaround, submitting a joint offer with the New Caledonian company Gladius, an appliance sector player since 2024. Their plan aimed to initially ensure continued after-sales service, and then, within two to three years, to restart activity at the main industrial site near Orléans, which produced ovens and hobs and employed approximately 350 people, without committing to specific job creation numbers.

“By rejecting the only bid with a future in industry, the disappearance of Brandt is now confirmed, as is the decline of French manufacturing,” President Bonneau told AFP. “This decision has very serious economic and social consequences and sets back the fight for reindustrialization,” the Centre-Val-de-Loire region and the Orléans metropolitan area stated in a joint release, adding that they could not “accept this disappearance of our industrial heritage.”