In 2021, the major failure of the departmental and regional elections already foreshadowed Adrexo’s failings: more than a quarter of voters had not received any profession of faith, which the advertising leaflet giant was responsible for slipping into mailboxes. The State then terminated the contract with the distributor, with a penalty attached.
The company, now known as Milee, was placed in receivership by the Marseille commercial court on Monday, a decision that will put some 5,000 employees of this Aix-en-Provence group, a major player in a sector in crisis, out of work.
Wages were no longer paid
The court made its decision “after hearing the report of the administrators and receivers and noting that the payment of salaries could not be ensured by the companies,” the company’s management said in a statement.
The company was placed in receivership on May 30, explaining that the advertising print distribution sector, of which it was one of the leaders, is “an area in great pain” with “unpredictable external elements” (Covid, inflation, etc.) and “whose accumulation is no longer sustainable in terms of cash flow.”
This observation procedure supervised by two judicial administrators and two judicial representatives was supposed to last six months. But “the August salaries were not paid,” testified Philippe Viroulet on Monday, one of the elected representatives of the Confédération autonome du travail (CAT), the majority union within the company, interviewed by AFP.
“Non-existent” cash flow
“We expected it, we saw the cash flow becoming non-existent,” he explained, specifying that this procedure will lead to the dismissal of the “5,000 employees who remained.” This lack of cash flow has also prevented the possibility of continuing the activity or any takeover project.
“A takeover bid that has not been financed to date had been submitted, following the call for tenders initiated by the receivers, thus preventing its future examination by the court given the impossibility of continuing the activity in the absence of cash,” details the press release from Milee’s management.
The advertising print distribution sector has almost halved in four years in France, going from 10.4 billion advertising prints in 2019 to 5.7 billion in 2023, according to La Poste, which for its part announced in April the reclassification within the group of employees of its advertising leaflet subsidiary Mediaposte.
Market collapse
Milee’s management, which also cited the market collapse, initially announced a restructuring plan in March that would cut 3,500 jobs. But before it could be implemented, “losses could not be contained and Milee’s cash position was too weak at the end of the first quarter,” management said in explaining its request for receivership.
For its part, the CAT union considered at the time that “the management bore a heavy responsibility due to the management style of the company and more generally of the Hopps group”, the holding company that owns Milee.
