Peugeot's origins as an automaker were in the Franche-Comté region, to the west of Belfort and Alsace, and a short distance to the north of the Swiss frontier.
By the mid-1920s, Peugeot auto production was focused on four sites at Beaulieu, Audincourt and Sochaux (all three in the Montbéliard region) and at Moulineaux (a short distance downstream from Rouen).
Artisan-style workshop manufacture was no longer appropriate to large-scale auto-production, and at Sochaux Peugeot had the space to concentrate industrial scale metalworking on a single site.
However, at the end of the 1990s, at the instigation of the then chairman Jean-Martin Folz, there was an acceptance that manufacturing all your own components was not the most cost-effective approach to auto-making, and several departments were closed down, including the central tool production facility, the seating factory and the foundry.
The following environmental achievements are cited: The staff car park was roofed over in 2010, and covered with 9,300 m2 (100,000 sq ft) of solar panels which produce 1,400 kW, saving 450 tons of CO2 emissions annually.