With four glass production sites, including three in France (Feuquières, about 120 km north of Paris, Le Havre, Normandy, and Arques, in the North of France), and one in Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, Saverglass produces 600 million bottles and flasks per year. Born from the glassmaking tradition of the Bresle valley in the North of France, the French group founded in 1897 in Feuquières, in the region of Picardie, also owns three sites dedicated to decoration (Feuquières, Arques, and Coulommiers, France), and 17 sales subsidiaries around the world. “As soon as the mid-1980s,” explains Régis Maillet, Marketing Director, “Saverglass focused the production activity on the high-end market to become the world’s expert in the manufacturing and decoration of top-of-the-range bottles and flasks.” And that was a winning choice, as the turnover increased thirtyfold between 1985 and 2016.
Betting on high-end standard models
As from 1997, Saverglass dedicated production lines to perfumery and cosmetics, mainly in the Feuquières plant. “Luxury codes are quite similar for perfumes and spirits,” Régis Maillet emphasizes. To meet the industry’s needs, as a complement to the production of specific luxury flasks, the glassmaker immediately chose to create ranges of high-end standard flasks with a heavy glass weight and original and elegant shapes easy to personalize.
“Paradoxically, this work on standard models is more difficult than on specific ones, since there is a lot to do with the design to find the right aesthetic balance for a flask. Then, the models are easily differentiated from each other with decoration,” highlights Stéphane Marchand, Perfumery & Cosmetics Market Director.
As soon as the mid-1980s, Saverglass started working with a pole of designers recruited to enhance the group’s creativity in all covered sectors. Since then, the company has launched two to three new standard models per year and, with over 50 shapes, it has one of the widest ranges in the industry today. But above all, almost all standard models’ stocks in the catalogue are managed and available any time, even small series: the minimum order is set at one palette for a standard model (one day is needed to produce a specific model).
Glass and decoration quality
Obviously, personalization requires the many decoration technologies the group is specialized in (enamel or organic screen printing, four-colour printing, partial or complete coating, metallizing, hot stamping, satin finishing, sand blasting, decalcomania, accessorization, etc.). However, Saverglass also offers to launch the process as soon as the finish mould phase, which reduces the initial investment by 50%, compared to a specific model, while creating a glass shape like no other. The finish mould engraving or parison mould bottom adaptations can also directly act on the glass.
Saverglass showcased their latest decoration creation made possible with these investments at the last Luxe Pack Monaco show: the patented Art & Touch technology, a new generation of decorations obtained with micro-etching to create endless refined designs. This technique can be combined with other decoration methods for extremely varied, astonishingly realistic effects. The only constraint is that it can only be applied on the bottle area that can be decorated, for now.
To reinforce their creative decoration offering, Saverglass has also been working with a trends agency for two years to better define consumer profiles. “We are now a real proactive force for our customers,” explains Laurence Marécaux, Bottling Market Director.
If they are real experts in decoration, Saverglass also excels in all glassmaking qualities highly prized in perfumery, including fire polishing. “The diversification process we launched over twenty years ago in perfumes and cosmetics compelled us to adapt to other quality standards, which retrospectively helped us make progress in the field of spirits. Conversely, the expertise we gained in heavy glass weights for spirits was a significant advantage to introduce new standards in the field of perfumery,” Régis Maillet adds.
The extremely recent industrial park (the oldest furnace dates back to 2013) is managed in accordance with quality procedures in line with the obligations to be met by a multi-site company with customers all around the world. Already the first ISO 9001-certified glassmaker in 1981, Saverglass is also ISO 14001 (environmental management), OHSAS (occupational health and safety), ISO 22000 (food safety management), and ISO 22301-certified (business continuity management system). No definite plan is signed with any customer until it has been validated by all the people involved in the production process. Manual and automatic quality controls are carried out during all production phases (raw materials, hot glass, cold glass, palettes).
By banking on high quality standard ranges, guaranteeing their stock availability, and massively investing in decoration, Saverglass found themselves in line with the new expectations of a market in search of reactivity and short series, without compromising on quality. In addition, the glassmaker managed to capitalize on their experience in spirits, without overlooking the specificities of the perfume-cosmetics industry: as Stéphane Marchand explains, “from design to delivery, our perfume and cosmetics teams are dedicated to this industry and also come from them.”
This positioning makes it possible for the company to both take part in major launches and serve young emerging brands. The bottles for the Jean Patou re-releases, the new specific model for niche brand Olfactive Studio, who used to choose one of the group’s standard models, or Tacit, the latest Aesop fragrance, count among their latest iconic achievements.
