Simplot’s European Fry Promise Meets a Plant Closure

Clarebout Potatoes told staff on 8 September it may shut the Moeskroen 1 fry plant in Mouscron, putting up to 392 jobs at risk. The J.R. Simplot Company plant is the smallest in the Belgian group’s network, and the company says older kit there lifts the cost of every tonne. No final shutdown is signed. Belgian law now forces talks with staff reps before any line can go dark.

The proposal lands about 10 months after Simplot closed its purchase of Clarebout, a deal whose own July 2025 notice said European staff and production sites would be kept, and even grown. Frozen-fry demand has since fallen behind the factories built for it. Moeskroen 1 is where that gap is being cashed in.

The Smallest Plant in a Five-Site Network

Clarebout informed employees and their reps of a possible cessation of production activities at Moeskroen 1, a site owned by Mydibel SA, the Clarebout subsidiary that still holds the old Mylle family’s Mouscron works. The plant sits at rue du Piro-Lannoy. It is one of two Mouscron sites, not the whole city footprint, and spokesman Bert Verhaeghe listed five plants still in the group: the two Mouscron sites, Nieuwkerke, Waasten, and Bourbourg near Dunkirk.

Verhaeghe said Moeskroen 1 is the smallest of those five and the one with the oldest equipment, so the cost per tonne runs higher than at the newer lines. If the talks end in a shutdown, output would be wound down in stages rather than stopped overnight. Clarebout says it will keep putting money into other plants to lift efficiency and product quality.

The group and its affiliates employ about 3,000 people in Belgium and France. Up to 392 of them are on the line at this one site. Clarebout opened the legally required information and consultation process the same day, and said the proposal will create “uncertainty for employees and their families.” Union officials said the site was locked after the announcement and that staff were sent home; Verhaeghe called the move an intention, not a final decision, and said the plant was due to reopen the next day.

Capacity Now Runs 14% to 20% Ahead of Demand

Clarebout’s own numbers are blunt. Production capacity now exceeds expected demand by 14% to 20%, while the company still pays the fixed overhead built for larger volumes. Verhaeghe put the world glut higher still. He said fry demand climbed for about a decade, plants went up in China and India to match it, and global spare capacity is now about 30 percent. Clarebout, he said, is inside that squeeze with its own 14% to 20% gap.

The cut at Moeskroen 1 did not arrive from a clear sky. In March, Clarebout halted the Nieuwkerke plant and put more than 300 manual workers on temporary unemployment from 11 to 23 March. ACV Food and Services secretary Lars Decock said the wider Belgian fry sector was stuffed with unsold product, with Asian competition and energy costs adding weight. At Lutosa in Sint-Eloois-Vijve, part of McCain, the weekend fresh-fry shift was pulled in the same month. Clarebout used the Nieuwkerke stop, Decock said, to line its kit up with Simplot’s.

HOW THE FRY GLUT HIT BEFORE MOESKROEN 1

On the farm side, the same spare capacity showed up as potatoes nobody would take. Belgapom, the Belgian potato trade and processing association, said in February that 70 to 80 percent of the crop was already sold on contract and that factories wanted no extra free-buy stock. Chief executive Christophe Vermeulen said there had been no demand beyond those contracts for a year. By spring, the free-buy print for processing potatoes had fallen to zero, and Flemish growers were allowed to dump surplus back on the fields under a joint raw-material declaration. A plant that stops frying is one less buyer for the next contract round.

The Expansion Promise Simplot Put in Writing

Simplot, the privately held Idaho food and agriculture group, announced on 14 July 2025 that it intended to buy Clarebout’s operating business. The notice said the pair would serve customers from 23 production locations. Clarebout, started by Jan Clarebout in Nieuwkerke in 1988, brought five European plants and more than 3,000 staff. Graham Dugdale, then president of Simplot’s Global Food business, called it a way to serve the European market with a family-owned partner.

We could have continued on our own, but the economic reality of the world, and a form of common sense, led us to come together. It’s a choice for the future and a sustainable future.

Jan Clarebout, CEO of Clarebout Potatoes, Simplot acquisition announcement, 14 July 2025

The same Simplot notice said the agreement would keep and even expand European plants and staff. That sentence is the one Moeskroen 1 now has to live with. Simplot completed its acquisition of Clarebout Potatoes in November 2025. Garrett Lofto, Simplot’s president and CEO, said the buy strengthened the group’s global footprint. About 10 months later, the smallest and oldest line is the one picked for a possible shutdown, while Clarebout says investment will continue at the other sites.

Capital went to the newer kit. Clarebout opened the Dunkirk-area plant at Bourbourg in 2023. At the other Mouscron campus on Schindlerlaan, the former Mydibel and Gramybel ground, contractors finished a 40-metre high-bay freezer with space for 56,000 pallets. Moeskroen 1, on older lines at Piro-Lannoy, is the site now described as too small and too dear per tonne. The glut made a cut easy to explain. The merger made it obvious which plant would be first.

Most of the Jobs Sit Across the French Border

Management told staff that 60 percent of the 392 people at Moeskroen 1 are French. The plant sits on the Belgian side of a border that workers cross from Roubaix, Tourcoing, and the rest of the Lille belt. A shutdown in Mouscron would land in French kitchens as well as Belgian ones, and any transfer offer has to work across two unemployment systems.

Isabelle, 58, a temporary worker for three years, arrived for her shift asking how a household with two plant wages would cope; her husband, 61, has been on staff for 10 years. Maxime, 27, lives in Roubaix, has worked at the plant for four years, and has children aged five months and two and a half years. He said family plans were collapsing. Those are the voices the 14% to 20% spare-capacity figure turns into.

Gaëtan Lestienne, an FGTB steward at the Mouscron plant, said management had let the site drift and that poor decisions ran back years, “since Covid.” The Christian union ACV said it wants to save as many jobs as it can, and, if a full close cannot be stopped, to move people into other Clarebout plants. Verhaeghe said reassignment to those other sites could be looked at. That is the only concrete alternative on the table so far, and it depends on Nieuwkerke, Waasten, Dunkirk, and the second Mouscron site having room after a year of thin orders.

The Strike Over a Sale Bonus

The same plants already walked out once over this ownership change. In early October 2025, while the Simplot deal was still awaiting close, staff at Nieuwkerke, Waasten, Mouscron, and Dunkirk stopped work in a fight over a sale bonus. Decock said talks had started on 30 September after reports that Jan Clarebout would take a large sum from the sale. Clarebout first offered €500 net a head, then raised the scale to €750 after 10 years’ service and €1,000 after 20 years, and said it would pay even without a union deal. Staff rejected both offers. Production later resumed, with the company saying the bonus would wait until the Simplot purchase was done.

FROM THE Mydibel BUY TO A RENAULT FILE

1. 22-23 December 2022: Clarebout agrees to buy Mydibel, including the Mouscron works, beating larger bidders. Mydibel then employed about 800 people.
2. 14 July 2025: Simplot announces it will buy Clarebout’s operating business and says European staff and sites will be kept and even expanded.
3. 2 October 2025: A strike over the sale bonus begins across Nieuwkerke, Waasten, Mouscron, and Dunkirk. Decock put staffing then at about 500, 1,500, 500, and 500.
4. 21 October 2025: Staff are back; the company says talks with unions will continue.
5. November 2025: Simplot completes the purchase and adds five European plants, taking its food plants to 23.
6. 11-23 March 2026: Nieuwkerke is idled and more than 300 manual workers go on temporary unemployment.
7. 8 September 2026: Clarebout opens a consultation on shutting Moeskroen 1, with up to 392 jobs at risk.

A year after people struck for a few hundred euros of sale premium, the argument is whether the smallest of those four strike sites still exists. That leftover bitterness is now the labor memory inside the consultation room. It does not change the glut. It does change how every offer of a transfer or a package will be heard.

What the Renault Procedure Can Still Change

Belgium does not let a large employer switch off a plant on the day of the announcement. The Renault law on collective redundancy, the Act of 13 February 1998, was written after Renault shut Vilvoorde without a real staff dialogue. For a firm with at least 300 people, a plan to cut 30 or more jobs in 60 days is a collective dismissal. Moeskroen 1, at 392, clears that bar. Clarebout has started the statutory information and consultation procedure with employee reps.

WHAT THE TALKS MUST COVER

• The reasons: Management has to set out in writing why it wants the collective dismissal, how many people and which groups are in scope, the timing, and how any extra pay beyond the legal minimum would be worked out.
• The copies: The same notice goes to the regional employment service and to FPS Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue.
• The alternatives: Reps can demand figures, ask questions, and test other options, including transfers, shorter time, or a smaller cut, before any dismissal is confirmed.
• The pause: Once the project is notified by registered mail, a 30-day cooling-off period runs before notices can go out.

Clarebout still says no final decision has been taken and that production at Moeskroen 1 would be phased out only if the proposal stands after those talks. ACV will push to move people to other Clarebout sites. Verhaeghe has already said that path can be examined. The glut on the farms and the spare tonnes in the fryers will sit in the same room as a July 2025 sentence about keeping European plants. For 392 workers, that room is the story now.