Raymond Sinnah, General Manager of SGD’s Perfumery and Cosmetics division

Premium Beauty News - The current crisis is unprecedented in your business!

Raymond Sinnah [1] - Quite true! Can anyone recall a similar period when the market for manufacturers in beauty packaging collapsed from 20 to 40% depending of the segments, in the first half of 2009? "This is a first" and we are all impacted by this crisis. And although there are currently some signs of recovery, we have to admit we won’t find a more "comfortable" situation before several months.

2009 is obviously a "special" year . Our activity has been strongly affected by stock clearance from retail market. Today, we can estimate that this stock clearance is partly finished at this stage of the chain. But this is probably not true on the side of our direct customers, perfumery and cosmetics brands. We will still have to put up with the effects caused by the bursting of this "bubble of overstocking" that occurred during the 2007/2008 period.

You must remember that while we were bearing the brunt of this historical drop, the consumer market only decreased by 5% in volume in France.

Given this situation, we are obviously forced to deal with it very carefully.

Premium Beauty News - How much leeway do you have in this case?

Raymond Sinnah - It is obviously small. You must remember that we are in a heavy industry with huge continuous industrial tools, furnaces that do not stop or restart just like that. Like most of the industry players, we have "shelved" some of the production tool. We have also anticipated the rebuilding of a furnace. SGD has taken advantage of the low activity to speed up several projects in the areas of cleanliness, quality, productivity and innovation in order to better prepare economic recovery.

We are on segments of "specialties" requiring both to be faultless in terms of quality and to be also competitive.

SGD continues its strategy of differentiation through innovation, and you’ll discover in a few days at Luxe Pack Monaco [2], one of the fruits of this innovative approach, especially in terms of environment, around our "Verre Infini" (Infinite ’Glass), with the help of several other manufacturers in the packaging industry.

Premium Beauty News - Fortunately, your business is not impacted the same way in other parts of the world where you are industrially operating!

Raymond Sinnah - Absolutely, China and Brazil are in that case. They are great growth engines for SGD. The end market over there experiences trends of + 5 to 10% per year. We have recently invested in Brazil in a complete unit dedicated to decoration (silk-screening, lacquering and glass etching) to enhance our offer. Brazil was the only glass factory owned by SGD that was not equipped with a decoration unit.

Premium Beauty News - Evolving laws continue to weigh on the packaging sector. Don’t you think?

Raymond Sinnah - As far as glass is concerned, even though you always need to remain updated with changes, everyone agrees that it is a material known for its qualities, its harmlessness and its stability. This is not the case for other materials. Concerning REACH, the glass material is exempt.