As a paper manufacturer, we have a dual role to play in education and passing on knowledge to future generations. Faced with today’s cacophony of information, newspapers and books offer more time for understanding and analysis, complementing the digital content that arrives in a continuous and abundant stream. Our role is to educate young people to take a step back and check the sources and information they receive.
But passing on our own knowledge to younger generations is also part of our duty as a company. To achieve this, we work with the schools, the link between us and future generations.
The Vosges department is home to around ten paper mills. The location of the CFA Papetier, the papermaking apprenticeship training centre, in Gérardmer, close to our mill, provides an opportunity to train young people in the specific features of our businesses. The CFA team is very approachable and determined to offer students high-quality training leading to diplomas. Our President, Yves Bailly, has also chaired the centre for several years.
Working with the CFA teams, we take part in careers and training fairs to encourage young people to join the centre. These fairs are also a chance to explain the different jobs carried out in a paper mill and to highlight our commitments to the environment.
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CFA Papetier
At the same time, we also take part in awareness campaigns run by INP-Pagora, the European’s largest training centre for engineers in the paper industry. This school, based in Grenoble, trains the future production, R&D and quality engineers for our paper mills. We welcome several apprentices and interns from this engineering school every year.
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INP-PagoraWe take our duty to educate and prepare young people for the challenges of the future very seriously, and we see work-study courses as a valuable springboard in this preparation. Every year, we host around thirty apprentices and interns to give them solid initial experience of the world of work.
With us, internships are everyone’s business! Mentors, HR, managers, colleagues… everyone plays a role in integrating and supporting work-study students. But the mentors who supervise these students are particularly central to their success. They are experienced, hands-on professionals who work alongside the work-study students at every stage of their training.
Some of our mentors are future retirees who have acquired solid knowledge during their career. To ensure that their expertise survives, we use work-study programmes so that they can pass on their skills, knowledge and experience to young people. This is also an opportunity to train them in our processes and corporate culture, and ultimately to integrate them into the team over the long term. In 2022, for example, a third of our work-study students were offered a contract at the end of their training.
100%
In 2023, 100% of our work-study students successfully completed their courses. A third even signed a contract when they graduated!
Mill tours allow us to explain not only our industry, but also our challenges and ambitions. To achieve this, we rely on our employees, who are proud to share their daily lives and show off their mill and its many facilities.
Since Covid and the start of our diversification project, we have put these mill visits on hold for obvious safety reasons. But as soon as machine no. 1 is up and running again, we’ll be happy to resume them so that school groups and our suppliers can discover our facilities and understand how paper is made. For us, the visits are an opportunity for open discussion, allowing young people to ask questions and prepare for their future careers. They are also a way of fighting all kinds of prejudice, including the prejudice against factory work!
