Decauville factory in Marquette-lez-Lille

[1] The advantages of the location were the availability of extensive land and good accessibility for steel and iron via numerous railway lines.

The site covered more than 80,000 m2 (8 ha), including 18,000 m2 in buildings, with good opportunities for expansion.

Shunting locomotives were the main products on the site[3] as well as commercial vehicles and construction and mining machinery such as forklift trucks, dump trucks, wheel loaders and construction compressors.

At the end of the 1950s, the Decauville Group ran into financial difficulties due to the changing markets, and a new direction was taken in Marquette.

The signing of an agreement with a German company for the realisation of large construction equipment was intended to revive the activity of the northern site.