Company profile: Verescence
Verescence invests in its largest, greenest furnace French luxury glass container manufacturer Verescence unveiled a £30 million investment at its flagship Mers-les-Bains plant, France shortly before Christmas. Greg Morris spoke to the company’s General Manager for France, Hélène Marchand, about the investment.
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ot only is Verescence’s new €11 million furnace at its Mers-les-Bains plant the facility’s largest, it is also its most environmentally friendly. The facility’s furnace number 6 has a capacity of 130t/day and is capable of producing 700,000 bottles a day. During the recent plant revamp, the company changed the design, shape and metallic structure of the furnace. It also reworked the installation of the feeder to obtain energy savings. The result was an energy reduction of 15% and 40% less CO2 emissions. The new furnace is gas instead of oil-fired. The majority of the furnace’s production will be a high quality glass named Xtra Flint, which is used in the high end perfumery and cosmetics sector and known for its brightness and transparency. While the majority of production will be flint glass, three of the furnace’s six production lines are capable of feeder colouration, should the need arise for coloured glass. Mrs Hélène Marchand, General Manager France for Verescence, is understandably pleased with the new investment.
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“A furnace is only rebuilt every 10-12 years so this is a very important moment in the life of our glass factory,” she said. “The environment is very important to us and our customers. When we rebuilt furnace number 1 in 2015 we achieved a target of 10% energy savings. “When we rebuilt number 6 part of the specification was to do even more energy savings, so we looked at a reduction of energy consumption and CO2 emission. The new furnace complies with regulations and makes us even more environmentally friendly.” Reducing its energy output and CO2 emissions is also good for its customers, who communicate a lot to consumers about their CSR. “By sourcing glass from Verescence the customer improves their environmental impact,” states Mrs Marchand.
Company Verescence has its headquarters in Paris, France and has seven plants around the world in France, Spain, USA and Brazil. Its French operations consist Continued>>
Company profile: Verescence
� The furnace will primarily produce Xtra Flint glass.
� Mrs Hélène Marchand is Verescence General Manager for France.
of the Mers-les-Bains manufacturing site and two decoration plants in Ecouche and Abbeville. The company makes glass for the perfumery and cosmetics industry and its customers include global names such as Chanel, Hermès and L’Oréal. It manufactures about 1 billion fragrance and cosmetic bottles a year globally. The Mers-les-Bains site employs 850 people and was originally built in 1896. The site has three furnaces – its two other furnaces have a capacity of 65t/day and has 13 production lines in total, in single and double gob. Once the glass is made, about 80% of its production is distributed to its French decoration plants, before being transported to its customers and shipped around the world.
Mers 2018 plan The recent investment was part of the Excellence 2018 plan and more specifically the Mers 2018 plan dedicated to the plant. A total budget of €30 million was allocated to renovate the facility, of which €11 million was for the reconstruction of furnace number 6. The investment included a complete modernisation of the production floor space. The factory was given a fresh lick of paint, new LED lighting installed, the canteen revamped, the offices renovated and the changing rooms modernised. Until 2016 the site also produced pharmaceutical glass, but this was moved to a new site in St Quentin, owned by SGD Pharma, while the Mersles-Bains site became under the ownership of Verescence and is dedicated solely to perfumery.
The decision was made to embark on the ambitious investment project in 2016. Mrs Marchand said: “We said to staff, we will stay in the factory and change it. Not only will they have competitive production tools to work with but we will change the aspect of the factory and make it a nice environment to work in. I think staff are satisfied with the jobs done so far but it is not finished yet, work is still ongoing.” Some of the production equipment Mrs Marchand refers to has been an investment in its forming technology. The cosmetics and perfumery industry is constantly asking for more differentiation of glass bottles to ensure their products stand out from competitors. As a result, glassmakers such as Verescence are requested to manufacture ever more complex shapes. Mrs Marchand said: “There is no limit to the imagination and we meet our customers’ requests as much as possible. We are asked by clients to go and find something new all the time in our forming techniques. The trends of a few years ago were for heavy bottles with lots of glass, but today the requests are for lighter bottles. “So today we have two types of requests: for very heavy bottles and for original shapes- for example, a shape inside the shape. Then we also have requests from clients for lighter bottles, so we are working in two directions. “For this we needed to change the forming process and make an investment.”
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“A furnace is only rebuilt every 10-12 years so this is a very important moment in the life of our glass factory,” said Hélène Marchand.
13 Glass International February 2018
Company profile: Verescence
� The furnace investment at Mers-le-Bains was €11 million.
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Inspection It has also invested in a new generation of inspection machines from fellow French company Tiama. “It is sometimes difficult to spot defects in perfumery and cosmetics bottles because they are so small,” states Mrs Marchand. “Automatic inspection machines on the market today have a good level of detection, and for us this is particularly important in terms of final quality. “But there are still some defects we are not able to see even with automatic machines and we need to make progress with our suppliers to be able to detect these defects with the machines.” The Mers-les-Bains site is situated in the heart of France’s famous Bresle Valley, which is a historic hub of glassmaking. Many local people are employed by the numerous glassmakers in the region and their knowledge of glassmaking goes back for generations. They take pride in their work because there is a rich culture of glassmaking in the area. Partly because of this, the Verescence site has a nice balance of older and younger workers, with a good configuration of experience and newer, fresher ideas. Also on site is an R&D centre and a school of glass. The company takes R&D seriously, with the majority of its 100 R&D staff based in Mers-lesBains. The Xtra Flint glass mentioned above was launched in 2015 and was the result of two years of R&D. The glass is regarded as brighter and more crystalline than perfumery flint glass. It has achieved a high luminance and light can now shine more brightly through the bottle. Its school of glass teaches people machinery training. Its production lines can have up to four job changes a day, so training for this is important. “We have short production runs compared to the rest of the hollow glass industry. Our average production run is around two to three days on one line,” states Mrs Marchand.
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� The investment included a complete revamp of the plant.
Industry 4.0 The next step for the factory is continued investment and to investigate the use of Industry 4.0 in its glassmaking process. It has invested in two 3-D printers on site for decoration purposes and envisages a lot of progress in decoration with Industry 4.0. The company has a technical director who recommends its technology suppliers for the group’s factories. For a company to be considered as an equipment supplier to Verescence, not only must it meet criteria in terms of quality and price, it also must be able to work with the company on innovation. “We need to be able to work together to develop new functionalities,” states Mrs Marchand. “It is important to be able to work with your suppliers to develop and innovate together and to be able to be better tomorrow, together.” �
Verescence, Mers-les-Bains, France www.verescence.com/