Choose France Awards:Business France honors international investors and France’s regions

This year, Business France has decided to honor five international investors who have chosen to set up in France and the French regions in which they are now based.

More than 50 foreign businesses from 21 different countries and located in 12 French regions entered the Choose France Awards 2020.

The winners were selected by a jury chaired by Pascal Cagni, Chairman of the Board, Business France, and Ambassador for International Investment, and made up of institutional representatives and prominent businesspeople.

In 2020, France’s regions, Business France partners and international business leaders have selected five winners for the following prizes:

· The “Ecological Transition” prize is awarded to Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceutical company which, from 2019-2020, invested €50 million in its Chartres site (Centre-Val de Loire region), with the aim of using only green energy for production activities, with green electricity by the end of 2020 and gas by the end of 2022, and to reduce its CO2 emissions to zero by 2030.

· The “Competitiveness & Innovation” prize is awarded to Collins Aerospace, an American aerospace construction business, for its Hélices Center of Excellence in Figeac and Ratier-Figeac (Occitanie region). Ratier-Figeac designs, manufactures and services propellers for civil and military aircraft. Sixty percent of the equipment made in France is exported all over the world, to fit both civil and military transport aircraft.

· The “Cohesion & Solidarity” prize is awarded to the British IT firm SCC (Rigby Group) for its two sites: Recyclea in Domérat (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region) and Altimance in Anzin (Hauts de France region), for hiring employees who have had difficulty finding work. SCC invested €340,000 and created 60 new jobs at its Domérat site, while at the Altimance site it has doubled its workforce, from 91 employees a year ago to 246 today.

. The “Special Jury” prize is awarded to the Swedish company Recipharm, whose Monts site (Centre-Val de Loire region) has produced the pharmaceutical form of the Moderna vaccine in just four months, compared with three years, which is the usual amount of time for a project of this scope.

· The “Special Covid-19” prize is awarded to German company Dräger for relocating one of its sites to Obernai (Grand Est region). Dräger has invested in an industrial production facility in France, to create FFP2/FFP3 respiratory protection masks to meet the health and industrial requirements of the French and international markets.

All of the entrants will be promoted on the Choose France networks, and the winners will be able to speak with Franck Riester, Minister Delegate reporting to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, with responsibility for Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness, as well as the members of the jury.