JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #86 - January/February 2014 - 26

laminates

interview

Aurore Estrade,
Strategy planning & Marketing Director
Gascogne Laminates

JEC Composites Magazine: Can you
give us a brief portrait of the Gascogne
group?

Aurore Estrade : The Gascogne

group is a major industrial player that
is organized into four activities:
- Gascogne Wood (manufacture of
wood-based products)
- Gascogne Paper (manufacture of
natural kraft papers)
- Gascogne Sack (industrial sacks and
consumer bags)
- Gascogne Laminates (materials processing and printing).
The international group has sales of
€420 million, a workforce of 2,125,
twenty production units and a global
marketing network.
Within the group, Gascogne Laminates has sales of €115,7 million and
two production sites, one in France
and the other in Germany. Thanks to
our recent investments (more than
€25 million over the past three years)
and a reorganization of our activities,
Gascogne Laminates is on the way to
becoming a leading global player in
a selected number of target markets,
including composites, or more precisely, prepregs.

JCM: You are a relative newcomer in the
composite industry, where you have
been fairly low-key up to now. Why the
current interest in composites?

A. E. : Gascogne Laminates has been

present in the market for composites
for a number of years. Our teams have
solid expertise in all prepreg applications, but our our industrial equipment was not up to the quality requi-

rements demanded in that market and
we did not push our specialization;
this slowed down our development.
Over the past few years, following an
in-depth analysis of our end markets, we prepared and implemented a
major change in strategy in order to
specialize and become our customers'
preferred partner in a small number of
selected markets.
The growing prepreg market has
significant technical barriers to entry,
but is adapted to our processes, so
it has become one of our priority
targets. We have carried out a number
of actions to develop and stand out in
that market: changing and reinforcing
our organization with a dedicated
team, ramping up our expertise, a
broad innovation plan, obtaining ISO
22000 and ISO 14001 certification
for our plant and making a significant
investment - more than €10 million
- to acquire a highly accurate and
reliable state-of-the-art industrial tool
that is placed in a dedicated hall.
Today, after more than three years of
research and development, the rollout
of a broad dedicated range of products
under the Bondcare® brand name, the
startup of our new machine, and the
signing of new long-term partnerships
with major players in the industry, we
have acquired a reputation as one of
the best suppliers of release liners in
the market and continue to develop
our business all over the world.
However, we would also like to
transmit our expertise to our partners,
which is why we created and offered
to organize the Prepreg Excellence
Days as a forum on high-performance
prepreg composites.
Thanks to our partners
- and we do thank them
for their support - this
event was a real success,
and so we now have a
higher profile in the
market.
JCM: Do you have any
specific knowhow to
pass on? What exactly is

your expertise in this field?

A. E. : Our long experience in this

market and the fact that we have developed strong partnerships with players
all along the chain have given us some
solid expertise. Our main strength is
that we have built up a range dedicated to this market, that is, with
different products as a function of the
end market (aerospace, wind energy,
sports, automotive) and the steps in
the manufacturing process. Besides
our line of smart solutions marketed
under the Bondcare brand, we have
developed performance tests that are
compatible with end-market requirements. We explain these performance
criteria to our partners; in this way we
create a shared reference system (language) that facilitates our exchanges
and enables us to develop customized
solutions for each partner. All our
products are tested and compared to
the existing products on the market
for all the performance criteria. So
our offering and level of consulting is
unique on the market; that's what our
partners appreciate.

JCM: Your latest investment is substantial at 11 million euros. Your domestic
market won't be enough to make it pay
off. What is your international strategy?

A. E. : In addition to its capabili-

ties, this new industrial equipment
does give us additional capacity.
Composites aren't our only target.
We also decided to specialize in the
medical market in particular, which
is another growing market with high
quality requirements. We already have

State-of-the-art silicone coating machine: 1rst half of the machine

26 jec composites magazine / No86 January - February 2014

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #86 - January/February 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #86 - January/February 2014