Continuous investments
Alix Hubin, Somater’s CEO
In order to strengthen its position in injected tubes, Somater is investing in new production machines and, more importantly, in a new offset printing machine capable of running at pcs/minute. In the make-up sector, where the management aims to double the turnover of the company in three years time.
"But don’t be mistaken", insists Alix Hubin, "not only our investments have been steady over the last thirty years (between 8% and 12% of sales each year) but we continue to invest in all the compartments where we are operating, that is to say, extrusion and injection blow moulding, injection and thermoforming.”
The group remains a bit a model of its own in the French industrial world where large family-owned SMEs are becoming fewer and fewer. "It is true that we are a bit of an exception," admits Alix Hubin, "with an exclusively family owned capital and a vision that has always remained very perennial, in terms of industrial development."
The least one can say is that the gone through road is impressive for a company who has managed to become one of the leaders among specialists of plastic processing in Europe mainly by the means of external acquisitions, including the latest to date, the former Polyflex factory near Dieppe, which dates back to 2006.
Currently the group’s core activity continues to concern the pharmacy-hygiene packaging. However, Somater has also earned itself an excellent reputation in the manufacture of upscale PET bottles for the beauty sector.
Makeup: a major focus!
The groups stepped in the make up market at the outset of the years 2000, following a fortuitous discussion with one of the leaders of a major global cosmetic group. "I call that a strategy of opportunities," Alix Hubin explains. "We often operate along this scheme. But then, of course, industrially everything has to follow!" And, in fact, it always does! "That’s why our customers trust us," she insists.
"A trust based on several other parameters that are called, responsiveness and speed of decision, a long standing family business, financial security, no risk-taking policy, local manufacturing, the will to manufacture in France and to assume our social responsibility in this matter."
"The example of mascara is interesting," she says. "A large group comes to us expressing its needs. The decision was quickly made. We decided to make every effort to build an industrial tool suiting the site of Marolles les Saint-Calais, especially concerning machines and their automation where we claim a real know-how. In a few months we were ready.” As a result, a genuine expertise that can only be renewed and transformed into renewed orders.
"Undoubtedly, make-up is one of the segments Somater is seeking to develop," we are told at the corporate headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris. "And we fully intend to set foot on that specific segment!"
Next steps underway, to reinforce our partnerships in terms of development and in supplies of mascara brushes and take advantage of the Group’s experience in the manufacture of tubes of lip balms to invest in a new segment, that of lipstick tubes.
"And in a general manner, emphasises Alix Hubin, focus more on foreign markets to no longer only depend of our domestic market."
