Ax's baths: from the commune to Eurothermes, and back

For a century, Ax’s baths depended on a private company. The Compagnie générale des thermes d’Ax, founded in 1879, owned the Teich from the outset. According to an old town hall presentation, it bought the Breilh establishment and the Hôtel Sicre in 1936, and new statutes, approved in 1947, brought the Breilh’s operation into the fold. [TO VERIFY: this document has not been read in full.] Its former owner was the Villemur family, whose château now overlooks the Couloubret bathing centre.

In the 1980s, the commune regained control. SEMTTAX was founded on 30 December 1985. Two years later, from 30 December 1987, it absorbed the Compagnie générale des thermes d’Ax by merger and took over all its establishments, according to the company registry’s history. This is the point at which the thermal heritage passed into the fold of the commune and its public partners.

SEMTTAX has no staff of its own. Its board of directors brings together, according to an old town hall presentation, the commune as majority shareholder, the Conseil général, the communauté de communes, the Région, banks and the Société thermale d’Ax.

In 1994, a management contract was signed. The town hall presents it in its municipal development plan: it obliges the commune to supply the operator with thermal water of the required quality and quantity until 2024, with no possible increase in the fee, which had not changed in twenty years at the time the text was written. Elsewhere, the town hall notes that the Eurothermes group had, before 1995, negotiated exclusive use of the thermal water and an operating contract it considers very favourable.

In practical terms, the arrangement rests on three pieces. SEMTTAX owns the thermal water — that is, the resource and the boreholes — and, according to the town hall, the Teich thermal centre. The Société thermale d’Ax, a subsidiary of Eurothermes, operates the thermal establishments and owns the Grand Tétras, the building housing the Modèle. The Bains du Couloubret, owned by the commune, are operated under a public-service delegation to Eurothermes. For the Teich, operation runs through a commercial lease whose expiry, in December 2023, would lead to the buyback.

SEMTTAX must supply water of sufficient quality and quantity, and spends around €150,000 a year improving the distribution system. It is authorised to operate boreholes FP1 and F7bis under a prefectoral order of 17 December 2012, according to the town hall. [TO VERIFY: the BRGM cites an authorisation order of 3 May 2012.] Easements also require it to supply water to the Compagnie’s former owner, the Villemur family.

These thirty years were also years of major building work. The Modèle, largely destroyed by a fire in 1992, was rebuilt in the late 1990s with the thermal establishment on the upper floor of the building — a choice that today causes problems with leaks, water routing and pipe noise, according to the Inventaire du patrimoine. The Couloubret, oriented toward ENT care until 2006, lost its 1925 building, demolished in the mid-2000s except for the south gallery on the facade, and reopened in 2009 as a thermoludic centre, the Bains du Couloubret. The town hall then ranked it second regionally among thermal-water leisure centres by attendance. The BRGM credits it with around 170,000 visitors a year.

The cures tell a different story. Patient numbers stood at 4,000 to 4,500 in the late 1950s, 8,000 in 1967, and between 7,500 and 8,000 through to 1973. They still exceeded 7,000 in 2003. SEMTTAX’s chairman, Alain Pibouleau, cites 6,000 patients in 2019 and 4,000 in 2023. The BRGM, for its part, counts around 6,360 patients a year for the Teich and the Modèle, with cures of up to 18 days. [TO VERIFY: these figures come from sources that don’t count the same thing and at different dates; they should be cross-checked against health-insurance and operator data.] Covid in 2020, then the energy crisis in 2023, weakened the whole thermal sector.

Owning the water, owning the buildings and operating the treatments are three distinct things, and the sources don’t always describe them the same way.

Other sources diverge. The local newspaper Le Petit Journal, in 2023, writes that the town owns the Bains du Couloubret and the Teich building, and that Eurothermes owns the Grand Tétras. The BRGM, in 2022, presents Eurothermes as the owner of the Teich, Modèle and Couloubret baths. This water also has uses beyond treatment. The town hall states that its heat is used to warm streets for snow removal and to supplement the casino’s heating. According to the BRGM, two communal buildings are heated using residual heat from the baths, and the resource’s energy potential is certainly the greatest in the Pyrenees, perhaps in France. Owning the water, then, also means holding a stake in heating, real estate and local finances, well beyond the cures themselves.

Negotiations between Eurothermes' management, chaired by Jean-Claude Hébra, and the elected officials of the Ax valleys began a few months before the signing, according to Le Petit Journal. The goal was to secure the future of the thermal activity. SEMTTAX decided to buy back the business to preserve around eighty jobs. The price was set at €5.5 million. Thermalism generates more than €6 million in revenue at Ax and supports local businesses. Ax was not alone in this: in 2023, Luchon went to Arenadour, France’s third-largest thermal group, Vernet-les-Bains to ValVital, and Saint-Lary-Soulan was entrusted to ValVital under a public-service delegation. But Ax chose a different path, one of returning to public control.

According to SEMTTAX’s chairman, the logic also had to do with timing. Eurothermes' commercial lease on the Teich centre was coming to an end in December 2023, and the group did not wish to renew it. The first priority was therefore to secure the activity and its workforce, in an approach the chairman describes as a model built with and for the territory, one that could set an example, as patient numbers had fallen from 6,000 in 2019 to 4,000 in 2023. The sale took effect on 1 December and was officially signed on 13 December 2023. The Société thermale d’Ax now belongs to SEMTTAX, and a new director has led the thermal centre since 1 December. [TO VERIFY: the exact capital structure of the Société thermale d’Ax after the sale; société.com indicates a sole shareholder.]

The project has substance. The thermal centre, oriented toward rheumatology and respiratory conditions, wants to develop the theme of healthy ageing and explore new directions, such as dermatology or burnout. The Couloubret is expected to be renovated and equipped for more considered energy management, and redesigned to offer more wellness treatments. The Teich is to be modernised in terms of its facilities, according to L’Officiel du thermalisme.

This last chapter is still open, and this article stops in early 2024. Several questions remain. Has the announced work at the Couloubret and the Teich taken place, and how is it financed? Has attendance returned to the 6,000 patients of 2019? What remains of the 1994 contract and its advantages, now that the operator and the water’s owner are one and the same?

Around the baths, the town continues to change too. The Château de Villemur, which belonged to the Compagnie’s former owner, is the subject of a real-estate programme including its renovation and a hotel, heated by thermal water from the boreholes, according to the BRGM. A Mercure hotel is presented as having been renovated in 2024 around the château.

What remains uncertain. The operator’s perspective on the 1994 contract has not been found. Ownership of the buildings varies by source. Attendance figures are not directly comparable with one another. The situation after 2024 remains to be documented.

Sources consulted