Séverine Dejoux and Olivier Six are abandoning their relaunch of a carbon-free chlorine-soda sector, weighed down by judicial liquidation.
On Tuesday June 9, the Exalia project leaders, Séverine Dejoux and Olivier Six, announced the “definitive abandonment” of their plan to partially relaunch Vencorex’s activities on the Pont-de-Claix chemical platform (Isère). They deplore a “deep feeling of revolt, bitterness and immense waste” in the face of the “obstinacy of a purely liquidative logic”.
Established last year after the purchase of part of Vencorex by the Chinese group Wanhua, Exalia aimed to produce carbon-free hydrochloric acid, soda and liquid chlorine for industry and the food industry. The project planned to recreate more than 250 direct jobs in the short term.
A legal process which locked the project
On March 24, 2026, the Lyon Economic Affairs Court rejected their takeover offer and validated the transfer of most of the installations to a scrap dealer. Supported by numerous local elected officials, the two buyers then submitted a second offer to buy the remaining assets and negotiate with the scrap dealer, without success.
In their press release, they denounce “the imperatives of deadlines, the inertia and the procedural obstacles” which have “doomed” the project, as well as the “rigidity” of the application by the judicial liquidator. Describing this failure as a “human, industrial and strategic tragedy”, they call for reform of the law of collective procedures, which they believe “can no longer be the gravedigger of industrial sovereignty”.
