Joël Viry
Premium Beauty News - At fifty years of age, you still have the same entrepreneurial spirit!
Joël Viry - Absolutely! There’s nothing I can do about it! And like any entrepreneur, over the years, you learn to refine your goals and strategies. Between 1992 and 1998 I developed several areas of activity as an engineer/employee; then in 1998 I invested myself more particularly in, Setaram, a SME whose turnover was of 7 million euros with 500,000 euros of losses to make it hit the 24 million euros mark in 2004 with two million euros benefits, In 2004 I decided to embark on a new adventure and concentrated on a very specific axis, that of high-end electronics dedicated to military equipment. In 2008, with the economic crisis, I had to hand over my business. But the entrepreneurship bug was still there!
And in 2011 I turned to other projects, this time in connection with the plastics industry. I started with a business of 2 million euros in turnover, Sermi Plast, and then followed with a second one in 2012 with 1 million in sales, SPI, and finally, the same year, with the creation of a structure in Tunisia, S2Tunisie. In 2014, this group of companies achieved 3.5 million euros in sales, mainly in two markets, home appliances and the building industry, and is today doing very well. But I understood that diversification was the key. This is when an opportunity arose: the PRP Company... A successful business specialized in a dynamic segment: the manufacture of bottles and closures for the beauty industry. Its products are intended for different market segments including Perfumes and its high-end clients (Dior, Channel, Guerlain...), mass distribution Cosmetics (Marionnaud, Clarins, Biotherm...), and also pharmaceutical laboratories (Pierre Fabre, Virbac...), etc.
Premium Beauty News - PRP, was a "sleeping beauty"?
Joël Viry - Absolutely! PRP (Productions Réalisations Plastiques) was created in 1975. Its primary purpose was to cater for the needs of markets using plastic containers. But let me provide you with some background…
In the early 80’s, Company managers decided to set foot in cosmetic perfumery a market where players were starting to develop ranges made of plastic components.
In 1984, PRP was the first company to launch the injection stretch blow technology in PET bi orientation of thick layers. At the same time, the Company created a R&D/design department in order to satisfy requests from its various customers.
In 1996, PRP built a new unique production plant in the Parc Industriel Ouest, in Oyonnax, France to bring together the different activities and to take advantage of the same modern environment not far from the future A 404 motorway. Inside this new site, workshops are dust free and in controlled atmosphere. These conditions enabled to meet the growing customer requirements in terms of product quality and of ISO 9001 standards for which the Company was in the process of being certified.
In 1999, PRP was granted the ISO 9001 certification after several years of work to implement a quality assurance system aimed mainly at structuring the services of a Company in full development. In October 2002, the Company obtained the ISO 9001 certification (2000 version).
In 2011, the Company could boast the following certifications: ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OH SAS 18001, Quality, Safety, Environment (QSE).
Premium Beauty News - On the technical side, the company is not lagging behind either?
Joël Viry - Yes, you are right! The Company has developed an expertise in extrusion blow moulding and co-extrusion blow moulding (2 and 3 layers), injection stretch blow moulding and Injection blow moulding and in injection moulding and bi-injection moulding. The Company uses thermo-welded multilayer films to produce high performance airless packaging; it has a workshop dedicated to screen printing, hot stamping, pad printing, lacquering and metalizing. It has its own flat/assembly lines. It has a thorough expertise in product control procedures (three-dimensional measurements, statistical sampling check, metrology)... The staff is trained to self-control to deliver an ever higher quality matching customer requirements.
In this constant quest for customer satisfaction, the continuous improvement of both our performances (Quality, Safety, Environment) and of our processes is paramount.
Some workshops areas were created and materialized in the premises: for example the ATEX areas (ATmosphère EXplosive - i.e., environment with an explosive atmosphere), machine circulation areas, safety zones around machines...
Problems related to the noise of machines are taken into account, such as, for example, the gradual transformation of extrusion blow moulding machines and blow-moulding machines into "all-electric" machines. PRP is committed to the environment. Every year a measurement of its carbon footprint is made, with a goal to reduce by 2% this balance every year.
Waste is effectively sorted: for basic industrial waste but also production generated waste. Waste is re-used: crushed, recycled or resold.
An energy action plan has been implemented and enables a significant reduction in energy consumption. The Company is also committed to research and is partnering in two projects closely related to the environment through its participation in the Plastipolis competitiveness cluster. Finally, each employee is made aware of environmental and sustainable development issues.
Innovation at PRP does not only focus on the development of products, materials... It also concerns innovation in manufacturing processes or in production tools. To this end, the Company actually designs its own machines to meet a need, a specific request from a customer, thus resulting in greater efficiency and high quality finishing.
Premium Beauty News - And resulting in fine achievements?
Joël Viry - Quite true! PRP has undoubtedly pioneered the use in France of the injection stretch blow technology in PET bi orientation of thick layers. PRP innovated with the development of an airless system as early as 1993 with L’Oréal. The Company was singled out with several Oscars, including the IFEC Packaging Oscar for SEPHORA’s Shower Gel Flask in 1998. I can also mention LANCÔME’s Spot Corrector in 2009, the launch of 2-in-1 bottles and of over moulded bottles, not to mention our glass polymer bottles, our offer for standard airless bottles, and many innovative finishings and decorations, such as liquid metallisation and, more recently, DIOR’s new PumpUp Mascara, the packaging for CHANEL’s hand cream Crème Main.
Premium Beauty News - What are the next steps for PRP?
Joël Viry - I must stress on the fact that this acquisition of PRP also enabled us to optimize our industrial tool by integrating on the same site the SERMI Plast entities. This year alone, the turnover will exceed 16 million euros. We are investing at all levels, be it in the area of personnel (20 people were hired since April) or in the production tool. Next year, we will still be spending again tens of thousands of euros, especially to improve our online decorating process (screen printing).We will certainly also invest in 3D technology and, of course, in our fleet of blow moulding machines. And there are plenty of new markets are opening up to us... Makeup is one of them!
