Bordeaux to Saillat-sur-Vienne: a crater and a town founded in 1928

One morning on the banks of the Vienne River, in western Limousin. At first glance, Saillat-sur-Vienne looks nothing like a picture-perfect village: a river, wooded hills, and above all, a vast factory whose smokestacks are visible from afar. Yet this small area of 6 km² is home to three extraordinary stories: that of a town born out of a rift between farmers and factory workers, that of a meteorite crater buried beneath its fields, and that of a paper mill unlike any other in France. Welcome to Saillat-sur-Vienne, a young village—less than a century old—perched on rocks that are over 200 million years old.

A young village built on very old rocks

Saillat-sur-Vienne is located in western Limousin, in the northwestern part of Haute-Vienne, right on the border with Charente. It is a region of rivers, forests, and rolling countryside, off the beaten path—yet rich in an extraordinary industrial, geological, and feudal history. People don’t come here for a monument, but to understand a place.

Distinguishing Between Original and Copied Content

This guide distinguishes between verified information and approximations—and there’s plenty to sort through, since online entries are rife with oversimplifications. The factory “founded in 1894 by Aussedat-Rey”? In reality, the site opened in 1894… as a tannery, and didn’t switch to paper production until the 1920s; the name Aussedat-Rey came much later. The “19-km crater”? That’s the residual deformed area: the original crater was actually 40 to 50 km across. And Limoges, often listed as “85 km away,” is actually only 42 km away by road. We’re setting the record straight on all of this, with sources to back it up.

In terms of transportation, Saillat has a train station on the Limoges-Angoulême line—a legacy dating back to 1875—but for those coming from Bordeaux (~2.5 hours) and wanting to explore the surrounding area, a chauffeur service from Bordeaux remains the most flexible door-to-door option.

Saillat's demographics are inextricably linked to its factory. Founded in 1928, the town reached its all-time low — 780 residents in 1936, shortly after its founding. Then, driven by the growth of the paper industry in the 20th century, the population rose to a peak of 1,268 residents in 1975. It was a time of massive hiring and working-class neighborhoods.

A slow ebb, then a tremor

Since 1975, the trend has reversed in step with industrial changes: the population has declined by about one-third, reaching a recent low of around 799 residents in 2020. Since then, a slight rebound has been taking shape: 813 in 2021, 826 in 2022, and 840 in 2023. The population density, at about 134 residents per square kilometer, remains high for a rural municipality—a sign of the concentration of working-class housing centered around the industrial site within such a small area.

A closer look at the data reveals a gradual decline rather than a sharp drop: 962 residents in 1990, 905 in 1999, 822 in 2006, followed by a long period of stagnation around 832 residents in the 2012 and 2017 censuses—two identical figures five years apart, a fact rare enough to be worth noting. In total, the municipality has lost about 34% of its population since the peak in 1975, but the most recent trend is positive: between 2017 and 2023, Saillat is gaining residents, representing an increase of about +0.96% over the period. Though modest in absolute terms, this slight uptick stands in stark contrast to decades of decline—and to the fate of many comparable industrial towns.

The town is a rural community, outside any urban area, with a population that is aging somewhat but not excessively so. It is nothing like a traditional farming village: here, for the past century, the demographic trend has mirrored that of industrial employment—rising until 1975, then declining, and recently stabilizing. Saillat literally lives to the rhythm of its factory.

This is the most spectacular—and least visible—feature in the history of Saillat: the town lies on the edge of an authentic meteorite crater, the Rochechouart-Chassenon astrobleme. The word “astrobleme” (literally “star wound”) refers to the scar left in the Earth’s crust by the impact of a celestial object, once erosion has taken its toll. Here, there is no longer a crater visible to the naked eye—but the rocks still bear the mark.

An impact that occurred about 207 million years ago

The impact occurred approximately 207 million years ago (late Triassic), well before the age of the large dinosaurs. The object responsible is generally estimated to have been about 1.5 km in diameter. The residual structure visible today measures about 19 to 23 km, while reconstructions of the original crater suggest a diameter of about 40 to 50 km. It is one of the largest impact sites in Europe and the only known astrobleme in France.

Recent scientific research has refined these figures with remarkable precision. The most precise dating places the impact at 206.9 ± 0.3 million years, in the Rhaetian, the very last stage of the Triassic—that is, approximately 5.6 million years before the Triassic–Jurassic boundary and its major extinction event: the two events, which were long thought to be closely related, are in fact quite distinct. The energy released is estimated to be about 283,000 megatons of TNT. According to the rankings, Rochechouart-Chassenon is among the five or six of the largest impact structures in Europe — and beneath the feet of the people of Saillat, these are no ordinary hills, but the warped floor left behind by that cataclysm.

From the 1967 memo to the 1969 cones

The scientific evidence was established in two stages, which are often confused. In 1967, the French geologist François Kraut wrote the paper establishing the site's meteoritic origin—but it was his colleague Jean Orcel who presented it to the Academy of Sciences. Then, in 1969, the field discovery of "percussion cones" (shatter cones)—these striated rock structures that form only under extreme shock waves—have definitively settled the debate. To protect this natural heritage, the Astroblème National Nature Reserve was established on September 18, 2008, on approximately 50 hectares spread across a dozen sites, straddling the Haute-Vienne and Charente departments. Here, you can literally walk on the remains of a catastrophe that occurred 200 million years ago—and see its rocks even in the walls of nearby villages, such as Chassenon.

The history of this discovery deserves to be recorded with its exact dates, since they are so often confused. Kraut's founding paper was read at the Academy of Sciences May 8, 1967 — and, in a delightful twist, not by its author: Jean Orcel is the one presenting it on her behalf. The famous percussion cones, meanwhile, have been located in the field August 8, 1969. Two years thus elapsed between the written hypothesis and its field verification—a time span that online entries often condense into a single date. As for the crater itself, we must face the facts: after 200 million years of erosion, no traces of it remain. The landscape has completely erased it; all that remains are the distorted base and the floor of the structure, whose impactites can be seen in the building stones of the villages.

It’s impossible to talk about Saillat without mentioning its industry: it was the industry that gave birth to the town and has sustained it ever since. But here again, we need to correct a common misconception. The site opened in 1894—not as a paper mill, but as a tannery (leather industry). It wasn’t until the 1920s that it switched to paper pulp production. The choice of location was no accident: the Vienne River provided the water for the processes, and the Limousin forest supplied the wood.

From a tannery to a paper giant

The plant expanded rapidly: its capacity increased tenfold in 1955, and it “took off” in 1963, with its paper products selling all over the world. In 1989, it was acquired by the North American giant International Paper, becoming its main European unit; then, in 2021, operations were transferred to Sylvamo, a company spun off from International Paper. What sets it apart: it is the only mill in France to control the entire production chain, from raw wood to finished paper. Most paper mills purchase their pulp from other sources; here, everything is done on-site—approximately 1.4 million metric tons of wood processed annually, yielding 320,000 metric tons of pulp, 240,000 metric tons of white paper, and 95 million reams. The facility handles a steady stream of 40 to 50 truckloads of wood per day and is classified as a low-threshold Seveso site.

Specifically, annual production consists of 240,000 metric tons of white paper and 22,000 metric tons of colored paper, packaged notably into 95 million reams of A4 and A3 paper—enough to give you an idea of just how likely it is that a simple pack of office paper has passed through this corner of the Limousin region. As for the wood, it flows continuously down from the Millevaches Plateau, at the other end of the department, in the daily stream of trucks that sets the pace on the local roads.

Two factories and a bet on the fuel of the future

Its economic impact is considerable: approximately 600 direct jobs and nearly 4,000 indirect jobs throughout the Limousin region (forestry, transportation, maintenance). Note that a second plant, a separate company, is also based in Saillat—that of Smurfit Kappa, focused on corrugated cardboard made from recycled paper. LICHEN is a project to produce hydrogen, e-methanol, and synthetic aviation fuel in Saillat-sur-Vienne and Étagnac. As of June 11, 2026, it was still described as a project under development in a question posted by the Senate. The most recent official procedural status identified is the CNDP decision of October 1, 2025: The preliminary consultation period has ended, and a liaison officer is ensuring that the public is kept informed until the public hearing begins.

The Smurfit Kappa plant, which has been located in Saillat since 1880—even before the tannery was established in 1894—operates in the downstream sector: it produces corrugated cardboard from recycled paper, complementing Sylvamo’s virgin pulp operations.

Beyond its factory and its crater, Saillat is first and foremost a land of rivers and wooded countryside. Here, the Vienne is still a peaceful Limousin river, lined with willows and alders and punctuated by rapids—a watery landscape that, from the very beginning, shaped the layout of the town and later its industry. All around, the bocage of western Limousin unfolds with its small, hedge-lined fields, its pastures for livestock, and its granite farmhouses with slate roofs.

Salhac, a name dating back to antiquity

As for the name “Saillat,” it comes from the Occitan form Salhac, derived from the suffix -acum, of Gallic origin and later Latinized—the very same suffix that gave rise to the countless names ending in “-ac” in Limousin, Périgord, and Charente. These place names generally refer to the estate of a Gallo-Roman landowner; since the precise etymology of “Salhac” is not documented for this town, we’ll err on the side of caution: it was likely the estate of an ancient landowner whose name has been lost. The suffix “-sur-Vienne,” on the other hand, was not added until 1953 to specify the location.

This natural setting, long serving merely as a backdrop to the region’s industrial history, is also an asset: trails along the Vienne River, the forests of Limousin, and the proximity to the Astrobleme Nature Reserve, several sites of which can be visited in the surrounding area. A quiet region where nature and history intertwine at every turn.