Premium Beauty News - What is the outcome of the year 2008, and what is your vision of the next six months?

Pierre Sabatier - The least I can say is that 2008 was a contrasted year. The first quarter was well oriented, but sales started to decline progressively on the next months and the fourth quarter was much more affected by the slowdown as the economic crisis was succeeding to the financial crisis. Eventually, it was a flat year for us, marking a halt in our continuous growth over the last 10 years.

Pierre Sabatier, VP Promens Personal & Health Care Packaging

In spite of the economic context,we carry on the same level of investments in R&D.

As far as industrial development is concerned we acquired new industrial 1,7000 sqm premises in order to relocate our manufacturing facility of Bellignat (France). The move was completed at the end of 2008. We now enjoy the benefit of an optimized unit, ready to host our future developments, with our European research platform under the same roof.

Concerning 2009, we’ll focus on addressing “bad news with good answers”; with the aim to mitigate the effects of this unavoidable economic slowdown. Achieving this goal, we’ll imply to progress continuously in the field of operational processes, and to aim at the “operational excellence”. Success will also depend on our ability to propose innovations adapted to customers’ needs.

Premium Beauty News - What about innovation in the health and beauty industry? What are the new products you are working on?

Pierre Sabatier - Actually, innovation is one of the keystones of our development.

Our research is organised around three main fields: technologies, materials and products. Our aim is to propose “useful” innovations. I mean innovations that do facilitate the use of products, or do help to protect their contents, but also improve the product’s performance.

Our development process is consumer-centred, with regular studies of consumers’ needs being at the very heart of product development. We regularly gather consumer panels in order to analyse their behaviour in front of a beauty packaging, and the way they use the products, from the initial purchasing intention to the product’s end-of-life.

Furthermore, as an expert on an ever-changing market, we carefully monitor fashion and technological and societal trends, thus enabling us to advise and help our customers in the development of tomorrow’s packaging. Our understanding of market’s needs helps us to propose relevant solutions.

In 2008 we carried on the development of our airfree (a patented airless system) ranges, and we launched several ranges of products using glass-polymer (a material with a similar thickness than glass, but without its fragility).

During the year 2009, innovations in the field of content protection, as well as new caps, are expected.

Premium Beauty News - Environment and sustainable development are the new buzzwords in the industry. How do you address this challenge?

Pierre Sabatier - Protecting our environment, in order to preserve natural resources and the planet’s equilibrium, is our priority today. Promens is aware of its responsibility and is already implementing an ethical scheme with the aim to reduce the environmental impact of its activities and products. This scheme is mainly based on the harmony between the environment and our products’ life cycle: from the choice of the material to the design, through production and transport, to final use and recycling.

Promens is among the very first operators in the rigid plastics industry to train its own staff to carbon footprint assessment. Thus, Pascal Henenmann, Promens’ Research Director was officially accredited by the French environmental agency, ADEME, to audit and assess the carbon footprint of our facilities and products.

Furthermore our three French facilities (Bellignat, Géovreisset and L’Aigle) have been ISO 14001 certified.

Eventually, as far as products are concerned, we recently launched our first airless system in recycled material: the Green airfree.

Premium Beauty News - What is your position regarding the development of “full-service” in the industry?

Pierre Sabatier - Our goal is to offer full packaging solutions to our customers and to the markets, innovative “out of the box” solutions.

Our aim is to concentrate our energy, our investments, on our core business, which is to offer packaging solutions, advices and productions. We’re not going beyond that point, in particular if you think about filling. It is an illusion to believe that one’s can excel in any fields, and today more than yesterday. We must “focus” the use of our resources.

Premium Beauty News - And regarding counterfeiting?

Pierre Sabatier - We are actively protecting our know-how through patents and models registration, nevertheless we have to cope with fakes from Asian countries.

Jurisdictional means are usually long, costly and inefficient. The best way to fight that phenomenon is to always be ahead of them and to shorten marketing delays as much as possible.