Jean-Michel Fouilland

Premium Beauty News - A few words first on the key industrial events that have marked the year 2011 for MBF Plastiques...

Jean-Michel Fouilland - First of all I can confirm that this was a good year. You know that we now own four production plants, including two injection plants in Oyonnax and Martignat, a polishing/metallization plant in Groissiat and a new assembly plant in Evron built in July 2011 and to which we will be adding 13,000 sq ft. We also started a second polishing line at Groissiat which enabled us to double our production capacity.

Premium Beauty News - You had already qualified at the time of "references years", the years 2008 and 2009 after signing one after another, One Million by Paco Rabanne, Ricci by Nina Ricci, Scarlett by Cacharel and L’Eau Mega by Viktor Horsting & Rolf Snoeren. Launches that had at the time somewhat surprised people due to both their daring marketing approach and their technical prowess. And what about 2011?

Jean-Michel Fouilland - Clearly, 2011 is a continuation of these outstanding years. We have never stopped strengthening our expertise in "complete products". We are no longer considered as "mainstream" injection specialists but more like specialists in the manufacture of premium technical plastic parts and like highly specialized integrators. So much so that the manufacture of sophisticated spray-caps, for example, has become one of our spearheads and now accounts for nearly 60% of our business. We integrate all types of materials and/or components. We seized that opportunity in the early 2000s and, over the years, our experience has grown considerably. To such a point that we have ended up designing some nozzles for actuators because of cost control issues and technological know-how. Last year was marked, of course, by the designing of Valentina de Puig where we took in charge all the spray-cap part and the whole upper part too, including assembling using UV bonding and the famous "nozzle." A 2011 year also marked by the release of Omnia Coral by Bvlgari where the tooling was far from simple.

Premium Beauty News - Closures, packaging, spray-caps ... but also bottles?

Jean-Michel Fouilland - That’s right! A fact which is not known enough is that we also make mascaras in injection blow moulded vials. Our capacity is of about 2 million pieces per month. In fact, we can consider that the spray cap activity has now become the key activity of MBF Plastiques. The so called "luxury" segment also holds a significant share but "Mastige" also continues to grow steadily (20% of our business).

Premium Beauty News - You have decided to remain very discreet for the time being, concerning this brand new decorating technique called "ColorMeta" for which you filed a patent!

Jean-Michel Fouilland - You will know more soon enough. What I can unveil today is that this technique which is not a metallization technique as it is usually understood, offers surprising results who have nothing to envy to traditional metallization. And it’s not lacquering either!