From Beijing to Romans-sur-Isère, the successful relocation of the Courbis group

Upon entering the main manufacturing site of the Courbis group, in Romans-sur-Isère, a hundred kilometers from Lyon, a strong smell immediately rises to the nostrils. Nothing more normal in a plastics factory. For 25 years now, this family-run SME, created in 1964, has been using Telene, a thermosetting resin, also used in perfumery, to manufacture its parts for the industrial vehicle market: tractors, buses, trucks… This extremely resistant material seems have nothing to envy to a metal hood. At first sight, the factory looks like a classic production site. The workers are busy around the presses of varying sizes to mold the different shapes that will come to garnish the vehicles of the manufacturers Massey Ferguson or Claas – formerly Renault Agriculture.

But when you continue on your way, you come face to face with a strange circuit where two tractor hoods, each mounted on a stake planted in the ground, quietly wait to pass through a room surrounded by glass. Last April, the Courbis group inaugurated a state-of-the-art automated paint line, worth 2.5 million euros. An innovation that brings the final touch to the relocation of its Chinese production, which began during the Covid-19 crisis.

A production site opened in China in 2007

The commercial history with the Middle Kingdom began in 2007, when the company decided to open a production site for technical plastic parts in Beijing, while maintaining its activities in France. Already well established on the European market, the Courbis group wants to develop its activity in Asia and more particularly within the world’s second largest economy. Seven years later, it began to produce large cowling parts thanks to a 250-tonne press, almost unique in its kind and manufactured in Taiwan, a few hundred kilometers away.

“Until 2019, we managed to make around 3.5 million euros in turnover per year there, with around sixty people. And then the world changed”, recalls Hervé Courbis, the leader of the Drôme group. The pandemic broke out in December in the country and all factories were shut down for three months. At the reopening, the French employees in charge of supervising the smooth technical progress of the operations are prohibited from going to the site and end up being repatriated. Very quickly, the manager and his teams realized the obvious: the Chinese adventure was coming to an end. Somewhere, a feeling of relief invades Hervé Courbis: “For a few years now, we have felt Chinese nationalism increasingly present in business. And we were starting to have difficulty developing our business”. At the same time, the group came into contact with European customers requesting large parts manufactured on the Old Continent, like those it had been used to producing for several years now in China.

How to repatriate a 250 ton press

There remains a major problem: finding a way to bring back the giant press, which is expensive and which will make a significant hole in the company’s cash flow if it is left behind. Then begins an almost impossible mission. In November 2020, China issues travel authorizations for a few days to travel to its territory for professional reasons. The Courbis group did not have time to think and sent one of its directors at the time. LR MP Emmanuelle Anthoine pulls the strings behind the scenes to push for a visa. Arrived on the spot, the messenger of the company finds himself confined for three weeks, including two in a room with bars without being able to leave. “It was purely and simply a prison. We did psychological support, because it was very complicated for him”, assures Hervé Courbis.

After almost a month of isolation, he manages to organize the dismantling of the machine. Before Christmas, the director returns to France, without having been able to finalize the return. Remotely, the group will manage to organize emergency repatriation. The paint chain installed on site will be dismantled. “It was not up to the European standard. And then, the requirements both environmental and of our customers increasing, we thought it would be good to robotize and have a top-level paint line”, explains the entrepreneur.

Following a journey of several weeks, interspersed with a stop in the middle of the Suez Canal after the blockage of the container ship Ever Given, the press arrived at the Romans-sur-Isère site in an exceptional convoy, before to be inaugurated in October 2021. “We had to build a piece of building to house it and pass the large elements through the roof”, recalls Hervé Courbis. All’s well That ends well. And the company has gained in productivity. When factory employees could only make one part per press a few years ago, they can now produce four thanks to the huge machine repatriated from China.

A durable plastic

This strategy of relocating its Chinese production is fully in line with its desire to push CSR issues as far as possible. The new robotic paint line does not emit any particles thanks to an extremely efficient filtering and treatment system installed outside the factory. In terms of energy consumption, the plastics industry is much less greedy than the steel or aluminum industry, with temperatures ranging from 60 to 200 degrees to shape the different parts and less pressure. But other efforts are being made to reduce the ecological footprint of the SME. “The goal is to put as many hoods as possible per truck. So we work from the design of the parts so that they fit together to make fewer trips”, specifies Florence Ronat, director of sales and development. of the Courbis group.

When it comes to recycling, mentalities have also evolved. “Until recently, customers were not prepared to accept lower performance in order to be able to have recycled plastic. Today, this is entering the discussion. It has become a real demand. of a discourse, but of a subject on which we must also be accountable to the end consumer”, considers Hervé Courbis. The model defended by the company seems to be bearing fruit. In 2022, it achieved a turnover of 32 million euros, slightly higher than the pre-Covid years. Its successful relocation, the Courbis group must now tackle a new major project: recruitment, while a crisis is currently going through the industry.