VERALLIA INVESTS €24MILLION TO MODERNIZE ITS LAGNIEU PLANT
Lagnieu (Ain), October 15, 2019 – Olivier Rousseau, General Manager of Verallia France, gathered many customers at the Lagnieu plant to celebrate the reconstruction of one of the plant’s two furnaces, specialized in the manufacture of glass food containers. €24million have been invested to rebuild the furnace and modernize the lines of this site which produces 4 million jars per day and serves both craft and multinational companies.
With this investment, Verallia, European leader and third worldwide in glass packaging for beverages and food products, supports its customers who wish to offer their products in a container whose material is increasingly valued for its environmental qualities, its aesthetic aspect and its ability to preserve flavours.
This new glass furnace, which alone produces about 2 million jars per day, has been completely rebuilt and the 5 production lines it supplies have been modernized. This reconstruction provided an opportunity to use the latest technologies and more modern materials, in particular to improve the energy performance and environmental impact of the facilities, in line with the Group’s environmental commitments. For example, this new furnace has a new combustion control system that promotes its homogeneity and therefore reduces hot spots, which emit nitrogen oxides.
This modernization also improves the reliability of the installations, the quality of the production and contributes to improving the working conditions of employees. The work also provided an opportunity to deploy an ambitious training programme of more than 1,000 hours, organized around the use of modernized machines, occupational safety, production quality and industrial excellence, one of Verallia’s priorities.
At the inauguration, Michel Giannuzzi, Chairman and CEO of Verallia, said: “With this new equipment, the Lagnieu plant has a state-of-the-art industrial tool to manufacture glass containers for food, which is a market in which Verallia believes and invests over the long term. This modernization illustrates our sustained investment policy, which allows us to maintain the operational excellence of our production facilities, and this project is fully in line with our objective to establish ourselves as the preferred supplier of glass packaging.”
About Verallia – An independent Group, Verallia is the third largest global manufacturer of glass containers for food and beverages, and proposes innovative, customized and environmentally-friendly solutions. €2.4 billion revenue with 16 billion glass bottles and jars produced in 2018. Around 10,000 employees, and 32 glass production facilities in 11 countries.
For more information: www.verallia.com.