Premium Beauty News - One hundred years old and in top form!
Didier Bourgine - Like many historical companies, we have gone through all situations! Ups and then downs and today we can be proud of having resisted all the economic crises and to now run a successful company that will achieve 18 million in sales this year, with 31 injection machines (from 80 to 400 t.), 40 robots, 5 lacquering lines, 3 vacuum metalizing chambers, 170 employees, nearly 140 million units produced in 2018. So indeed, considering our age, We are in good shape!
Premium Beauty News - Tell us more about your Company...
Didier Bourgine - Almost six decades ago, Jacques Augros pioneered the luxury perfume industry to cap perfume bottles with what was regarded at the time as a major innovation: the "Plast-Emeri" system developed with Pochet, followed by the "Opercule" system, which was adopted by leading perfume brands. In 1980, my father, Jacques Bourgine acquired Augros. I joined him in 1991.
We decided to work on three strategic areas which are still the backbone of our industrial strategy:
– The globalization of skills to have a mastery of all the key manufacturing steps, made possible with the acquisition in 1998 of MSV, the vacuum metalizing and lacquering unit.
– Innovation as a spearhead to offer unique solutions that adapt to market developments, such as Comp’Steel, a standardized automated weighing solution, or Ready To Pack, a standardized development process to reduce by 30% development times and speed up time to market, and finally, the integration of spray caps that simplify the beauty gesture.
– Automation, a pillar of continuous improvement, cost control and total quality.
Premium Beauty News - Is automation the ideal solution?
Didier Bourgine - In our trade, there are no other! And it is essential to generate financial resources that can then be reinvested. All our presses are now automated with triple-axis robots, and we now have a total of 9 six-axis robots on our assembly and secondary process lines.
Premium Beauty News - You have also changed you business model?
Didier Bourgine - We abandoned the mass market, to specialize in high-end and custom products. Our clients are leading European brands. We are very fortunate to have in Europe, within a very accessible radius, what is best in the world in terms of perfume and cosmetic brands. As for the lacquering and metallization unit, we only use 15% of its capacity. The remaining production is performed as a row 2 activity, but most of the time it is dedicated to customer orders. We accept orders ranging from 10,000 to one million pieces. Speed, flexibility..., and reactivity are our watchwords!
Premium Beauty News - And what about your equipment?
Didier Bourgine - We subcontract them but under our full control! All our moulds are designed and developed in-house. Our department almost works in 3 eight hour-shifts. This allows us to reduce development times and to also achieve substantial savings by standardizing their designs.
Premium Beauty News - Perfumery, skincare and make-up…, what are your latest achievements in these areas?
Didier Bourgine - Today 90% of the packs we develop include surface treatment. Our latest spray cap for INCC Parfums, Mercedes-Benz, The Move, is metal blue with a specific automated button actuator assembly. In the make-up segment, we designed the decoration of Dior’s Ultra Rouge, with a particularly demanding and complex lacquering of the Tesem aluminium case.
