It’s ultimately not for this year, as hoped at the very beginning. The Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, which is building a factory in Alsace, its first outside China, will begin its production of equipment for mobile networks, particularly 5G, there “at the end of 2025”, the deputy general director of its French branch said on Saturday. .
This “factory will come out of the ground” and “will launch normally (its production) towards the end of 2025”, declared Minggang Zhang on France Inter. “The ambition is to produce 1 billion goods per year with 500 jobs at stake, and it is to manufacture in France to supply the entire European market,” he said.
An objective aimed at even if Germany plans to ban parts manufactured by Huawei and by ZTE, another Chinese manufacturer, in its 5G networks from 2026. And even if the European Commission has called on the 27 member countries and telecom operators to exclude from their mobile networks these two suppliers which it considers to be at risk for the security of the EU.
“Construction is progressing and it’s progressing well. And the entire European market, we are there, we are progressing, we are working well and while adopting a completely transparent manner for the different States, the different interlocutors,” assured Minggang Zhang, saying he was “confident”.
Equipment for antennas
In the context of the United States/China trade war, Washington has already banned the sale of equipment from five Chinese suppliers, including Huawei and ZTE, citing risks of espionage or sabotage of Western networks, which these companies deny.
Concerning France, Huawei announced at the end of 2020 its decision to install a factory at the Business Parc in Brumath (Bas-Rhin), a town of around 10,000 inhabitants located around twenty kilometers from Strasbourg, not far from Haguenau, and invest 200 million euros in it. This site, described as “ecological”, must produce the main equipment making up the wireless base stations (i.e. the antennas) intended for the European market.
Arriving in France in 2003, where the group opened six research centers and a global design center in Paris, Huawei says it has achieved 2.5 billion euros in turnover in France in 2021 and claims nearly 10,000 jobs generated.
The company also claims a 20% share of the French telecoms infrastructure market, despite the strong restrictions resulting from the so-called “anti-Huawei” law of 2019, aimed at protecting French networks from “risks of espionage, hacking and sabotage” enabled by 5G.