Salt production and industrial history

White gold of the Camargue

On these lands beaten by the wind, the sea offers an inexhaustible resource: salt. It has been exploited for food conservation since ancient times.

At the beginning of the industrial era, two entrepreneurs profited from this white gold. In 1855, Henry Merle transformed the marshes into saltworks and synthesized salt into soda to supply the soap makers of Marseille. In 1891, a Belgian industrialist, Ernest Solvay, set up a soda-ash factory nearby, using a secret production process. Since then, the two salt companies Péchiney and Solvay have been developing housing, working, leisure, education and care facilities to permanently establish their employees in this somewhat remote part of the world.

In 1968, the Compagnie des Salins du Midi bought Péchiney and gradually extended the operating area to the west. Major development works transformed the sansouïres and lagoons of Beauduc, Rascaillan, Galabert and Fangassier. Powered by the Beauduc waterworks, these improvements will allow the Compagnie des Salins du Midi to increase its annual production to one million tons of sea salt.

A working class town

The salt harvest is a grueling job that requires a big workforce. In no time, local workers coming from the Gard and the Lozère were not enough. When the Great War broke out, the State called on Italians, Russians, Armenians and Greeks to compensate for the absence of locals who had left to fight: The salt industry employed up to 1000 workers. This is how a town and two working-class quarters were born, separated by a moor where the bulls grazed.

A town out of the ordinary with the looks of a mining village. A working class town built by industrialists. A pure product of social utopias of the 19th century. Eight rows of 100-meter long brick houses, identical to those of the mining cities of the north, facing the houses of foremen and engineers. When the workers were promoted, they earned the right to move to a more comfortable home.