Mask surplus burdens companies

Cheaper imports hurt French national effort

PARIS — The French praised the altruism of their textile and luxury goods companies when production facilities got diverted from churning out the latest fashions to making cloth masks designed to protect the public from the coronavirus.

Now, the companies that helped France avoid a shortage of virus-filtering face wear for everyday use say they need help unloading a surplus of 20 million masks. They asked the French government for aid promoting and finding buyers for the unsold output of the industry’s national effort.

Hundreds of textile and clothing manufacturers answered the government’s call for millions of masks superior to homemade versions. President Emmanuel Macron last month sported a military-tested model embroidered with the tri-color national flag to advertise the “Made in France” masks.

Yet demand dried up for the domestically produced masks that sold for a few euros at supermarkets and pharmacies or were available in bulk for free distribution by businesses and local governments. Manufacturers and the government acknowledged that many suppliers and consumers still opted for cheaper disposable face masks from Asia.

“We are faced with a lot of competition” from countries with lower labor costs, said Thomas Delise, owner of Chanteclair, the knitwear manufacturer behind the mask Macron flashed.

In an interview at his factory southeast of Paris, he called for trade barriers to large imports and coordination within Europe to buy Europe-made masks.

Guillaume Gibault, founder of underwear brand Le Slip Francais, sees the slump as a marketing and distribution problem. The washable, specially engineered masks produced by his company and others saw “a very strong and immediate demand” before the excess accessories piled up.

“Not everyone necessarily knew about what was available around them, and the public didn’t necessarily know where or what to buy,” he told French public radio service RFI.

Some textile companies said that the government was slow to validate their masks as effective in filtering out particles, which slowed their ability to get to market before people were allowed to start emerging from their homes and needed masks.

Francois Mori The Associated Press A worker walks by fabric cut for face masks at Chanteclair Hosiery, a knitwear clothing manufacturer, in Saint Pouange, east of Paris. Several companies have a mask surplus.