Cordon Group Ten years after taking over the Sony site, electronics manufacturer Cordon stays the course in Alsace
Having taken over the Japanese giant's Ribeauvillé (Haut-Rhin) plant in 2014, which had symbolized the golden age of Japanese investment in Alsace, the group of Breton origin has stabilized the workforce at around 300. The site has drawn on its unique history to integrate with its new owner's strategy and participate in its evolution towards a circular economy applied to electronics. It is one of the loyal exhibitors at the Be 5.0 - Industries of the Future trade show in Mulhouse, a fact it will confirm at the 2024 edition on November 26 and 27 at the Parc Expo.
It's already been ten years since Cordon Group set up in Alsace. This Breton electronics player landed on the other side of the country, seen from its bases, with a great deal of media coverage: it took over the Sony factory in Ribeauvillé (Haut-Rhin) whose opening in 1986 had been the emblem of the Japanese electronics giants' conquest of Europe in the 1980s, and of their infatuation with Alsace, particularly the central part around Colmar, culminating in 1,600 employees in 1999. Before it became the embodiment of their relative decline at the beginning of the 21st century.
A decade after its change of ownership, the site is still firmly established in the landscape, at the foot of the vineyards. The workforce has stabilized at around 300, the same level as when Cordon Group took full control.
From its headquarters in Dinan (CĂ´tes d'Armor, France), the Alsatian entity has inherited from its particular history the manufacturing capacities that make it, along with a counterpart in Italy, the pillar of the production division of a group that has established itself as a benchmark in European electronics: still presided over by its founder in 1989, Serge Cordon, it employs 4,000 people, two-thirds of them in France, spread over 38 sites in 13 countries, having achieved sales of 450 million euros by 2023.
Ribeauvillé provides design, manufacturing and assembly services on a full or partial subcontract basis for customers who are themselves designers and manufacturers. “We can, for example, manufacture a board to be integrated into a complete electronic product, or the product itself, depending on demand,” adds Emmanuel Adam, Business Developer. The activity has gained in added value by including testing and moving up the production chain: the Alsatian teams are increasingly involved in the development of new customer projects.
One factor in this evolution is the fact that its contacts have moved closer together geographically. “The phenomenon of relocation is a reality in the electronics industry. In a close-knit relationship, we can engage in more intense dialogue with our contacts. We become a source of proposals,” notes Emmanuel Adam.
But Ribeauvillé has also expanded into repair, refurbishment and after-sales, notably for audio and video products. The site is thus fully in line with Cordon Group's strategy of “becoming a player in the circular economy of electronics, from design to logistics, right through to the end of an appliance's life”, explains its communications manager Cécile Couboulic. This has led to the emergence of reuse, recycling (waste electronic and electrical equipment, or WEEE, which is not reusable in itself) and logistics divisions within the group.
At Ribeauvillé, these functions complement each other: “When we take charge of product returns, we can detect defects and pass them on to our partner manufacturers, so that they can improve their offer,” explains Emmanuel Adam. In this way, the site tends to offer a global service, all the more so as it is increasingly developing a logistics offer - reverse logistics for return flow management, kit preparation (kitting) - by itself or by calling on the specialized entities of Cordon Group.
In this way, the activities of the Alsace site lead to multiple applications, at the end of the chain of successive users of these offers. Ultimately, they are found in home automation, metrology (measuring instruments), medical equipment, security, connected objects, and so on.