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Hennessy staff in France strike over plan to bottle cognac in China amid EU tariff row
The move could see production shifted from France, impacting jobs and local economies
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Around 500 staff at Hennessy, the cognac maker owned by French luxury giant LVMH, went on strike on Tuesday, a union representative said, to protest what he said was a plan to potentially bottle the brandy in China to avoid tariffs.
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About half the workforce at the company’s bottling plant in Cognac in southwest France had stopped work, said Michael Lablanche, a regional representative for the CGT labour union.
Beijing imposed duties of more than 30 per cent on imports of bottled brandy from the European Union in October, hitting Hennessy as well as other French companies such as Remy Cointreau and Pernod Ricard.
China is the second-largest export market for cognac after the US and the industry’s most profitable territory, accounting for US$1.7 billion in exports last year. Difficult economic conditions in China and the US, however, have prompted a sharp decline in cognac sales. The industry is also suffering from a bad 2024 harvest.
A plan to ship cognac in containers and bottle it in China rather than France was discussed last week by industry body Le Syndicat des Maisons de Cognac (SMC), Lablanche said.
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Bottling in China rather than France would allow companies to circumvent the tariffs but would be a “disaster” for workers, he said.
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