From loans to guarantees, equity capital or advisory services, … Since 2015, the European Union – through the European Investment Bank (EIB) – has made up to €7 billion available to French companies through Bpifrance large panel of solutions. The new InvestEU program  brings new changes as it allows National Promotional Banks such as Bpifrance to manage the European budget on behalf of the Commission, in the same way as the EIB Group does. Signed in July 2022 between the two organizations, this agreement is the first of its kind in France and the most important one in Europe to date. Through this partnership, Bpifrance will offer solutions to support industry and help French companies suffering from the war in Ukraine.

Accelerating the modernization of French industry

Even though the fourth industrial revolution has already begun, only 20% of French industrial start-ups and SMEs have started their transformation. The European Commission and Bpifrance plan to help companies evaluating their maturity level on many aspects related to new technologies (internet of things, robotization, artificial intelligence…) to modernize their production chains. To achieve this, Bpifrance will until 2027  carry out free-of-charge consulting missions for 1,300 companies. The 3-day missions will offer a better vision of the industry of the future to the benefiting companies by detailing their situation and their level, and then propose an appropriate solution to develop their digital transformation. For this program, Bpifrance mostly targets companies that have followed, currently following, or that will follow an Accelerator program.

Offering support to the consequences of the war in Ukraine

Ukraine and Russia, major exporters of metal, wood, and agricultural products, have long supplied many French companies, who must now turn to new suppliers.   They also face  rising energy costs and market losses. All these impacts are directly or indirectly weakening the cash flow and activity of most French SMEs and mid-caps. In response, Bpifrance has set up a support plan to help them adapt to this new context, taking form of consulting missions:

• 3-day free of charge consulting missions to assess the maturity of companies around climate matters.
• 10-day missions offered at an attractive price such as the “Diag 360 Rebond” (which helps the company implement an action plan in response to a crisis to regain confidence and re-mobilize the teams in the business project), but also consulting missions surrounding environment, supply chain or cash flow and working capital (“Cash BFR”) strategies.

Bpifrance plans to support a total of 800 companies by the end of 2024.