Premium Beauty News - Your trade requires continuous questioning!
Pierre Miasnik - We do not have a choice! Our trade has become considerably more complex over the past ten years. We cannot afford to make mistakes, whether with the industrial tool or the products we make and place on the market. We must manage and, to a certain extent, anticipate stricter and stricter regulations, while offering ever-more innovative, high-performance, perfectly safe products for the brands we supply. For example, can you imagine we have over two thousand tonnes of flammable materials on a permanent basis in one of our main plants in France? Plus, we have 12 plants around the world.
All our sites are fully compliant with environmental regulations. We recycle 97% of our hazardous materials, 83% of our total waste, and 100% of industrial wastewater is retreated.
We have already proven, and we keep proving on a daily basis that we deeply believe in quality, excellence, and in the development of this nail varnish market. We have geographically diversified our production tools, and we keep investing in new techniques, thanks to our powerful R&D services. But nail varnish remains a beauty product, so there must be no compromise on creativity, which Fiabila keeps developing.
Premium Beauty News - Over the past few months, people have been talking about a nail varnish consumption crisis.
Pierre Miasnik - Well, we did have to cope with a cyclical market slowdown, but it is getting dynamic again. Obviously, the arrival and development of gel-based formulas, whose use is not perfectly safe, had a real impact. So, we had to innovate, and we did. We keep innovating with our 40 laboratory researchers. First of all, we need to ask the right questions… What do consumers want? What level of requirement, comfort, but also, and above all, quality and safety? We have been working this way for about three years in order to remove nitrosamines from our formulas, which led us to register three patents about the addition of inhibitors, bentonite substitutes, and nitrocellulose substitutes, respectively. Only the latter remains under study. The two others are finalized, and we are the only ones to offer a reliable, efficient solution.
All this just shows that Fiabila is most likely the most advanced company as regards these technical changes, because we give ourselves the means to progress, in terms of production tools, consumer safety, and full compliance with the legislation, all around the world.
Premium Beauty News - Precisely, let’s talk about this! Today, you have plants in seven countries.
Alexandre Miasnik - That is what was said a bit earlier. We have geographically diversified our production tools to be as close as possible to our customers. We can meet the requirements of a very strict regulatory framework, but also of consumers, on a global basis, in line with their needs. And we are the only ones to be able to do this. It is the privilege, but also the difficulty of being number one.
In Brazil, we cannot but be satisfied. The year 2018 will have been the first full year of production, and we have excellent forecasts. As a reminder, it is the first market in volume in the world, and its monthly potential reaches about 90 million units. Our plant is way above the local level. It employs more than 50 people who produce bulk and conditioned products on five automated lines. Besides, if our customers request it, we can double our current capacity.
In Japan, we are building a new extension to enhance our storage capacity, and we have actually become the main supplier of this country. It took us no less than 18 years to gradually reach this rank. In the US, our position is the same and, as you know, we have invested as much as 23 million dollars there over the past few years. Today, we have a wonderful plant. Lastly, we settled in India twenty years ago, deliberately positioning ourselves at the higher end of the scale, which represents about 15% to 20% of the market. We are more and more satisfied of our presence there.
We are still present in Mexico, which remains a dynamic market, and we are continuing our efforts in China, despite the very tricky regulatory context.
Premium Beauty News – You have made “content”, but also “container” innovations!
Pierre Miasnik - Exactly! We have been partly developing and registering our own packaging shapes for two years. It is an additional service we offer our customers, thanks to our technical service: they can draw a whole pack and have it developed by our suppliers. As regards packaging, we have just received a new filling machine in France, whose pace can reach 150 strokes per minute, so the line can produce about 100,000 units per day, with two teams working on it.
