\n<\/p>\n
D<\/span>rop a Duralex glass and it will most likely bounce, not break. The French company itself has tumbled several times in the past two decades and always bounced back, but never quite as spectacularly as when, earlier this month, it asked the public for money.<\/p>\n An appeal for \u20ac5m (\u00a34.4m) of emergency funding to secure the immediate future of the glassworks took just five hours and 40 minutes to reach its target. Within 48 hours, the total amount pledged had topped \u20ac19m.<\/p>\n Fran\u00e7ois Marciano, 59, the director general of Duralex, said the response had astonished everyone at the company. \u201cWe thought it would take five or six weeks to raise the \u20ac5m. When it reached nearly \u20ac20m we had to say stop. Enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/span>Fran\u00e7ois Marciano, chief executive of Duralex, holds up a Picardie glass.<\/span> Photograph: Magali Delporte\/The Guardian<\/p>\n As a staff cooperative, \u20ac5m is the maximum Duralex can accept in public investment under financial rules.<\/p>\n Mention Duralex to any French person and they will be transported back to childhood and a school canteen. The brand evokes a mix of nostalgia and pride and is a symbol of French patriotism and industrial savoir faire.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re like Proust\u2019s madeleines,\u201d Marciano said. \u201cThe French people want to save us. They are fed up with factories closing and the country\u2019s industries declining.\u201d<\/p>\n At the Duralex factory on an industrial estate in La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin on the banks of the Loire just outside Orl\u00e9ans, Marciano says he and his colleagues are \u201cfloating on a cloud\u201d after the appeal.<\/p>\n Eighteen months ago, Marciano oversaw a staff buyout of the company, which had been placed in receivership for the fourth time in 20 years. Today, 180 of the 243 employees are \u201cassociates\u201d in the company.<\/p>\n <\/span>Suliman El Moussaoui, the leader of the CFDT union at Duralex.<\/span> Photograph: Magali Delporte\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Suliman El Moussaoui, 44, a union representative at the factory where he has worked for 18 years, said the appeal had prompted \u201ca tsunami of orders, so many that we\u2019re struggling to keep up. Every time the company is mentioned on the television or radio we have more orders. It\u2019s been amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n Inside the factory, a simple but magical alchemy takes place. A mix of sand, soda ash and limestone, the exact proportions of which are a closely guarded secret, is heated in a vast overhead oven to 1,400C. Glowing globs of molten glass drop into iron casts that are blasted with a flame of gas. The red-hot glass is instantly pounded into shape, sprung from the mould, snatched by metal pincers and placed on a conveyor belt.<\/p>\n <\/span>The iconic Picardie glasses coming out of the 1,440-degree oven<\/span> Photograph: Magali Delporte\/The GuardianDuralex production video <\/p>\n The process has changed little since Duralex \u2013 which is said to take its name from the Latin expression Dura lex, sed lex<\/em>, meaning \u201cthe law is harsh, but it is the law\u201d \u2013 opened in 1945. When the Guardian visited, the production line was turning out small clear glasses in the Provence range.<\/p>\n <\/span>Workers in the factory starting a new production of glasses.<\/span> Photograph: Magali Delporte\/The Guardian<\/span>Each glass is carefully inspected.<\/span> Photograph: Magali Delporte\/The Guardian<\/p>\n A worker brandishing tongs lifted a glass to the light to inspect it for faults. During a production run, more than a dozen samples of whatever is being made \u2013 glasses, plates, bowls \u2013 will be randomly removed and subjected to stress tests. In the quality control room, they will be heated to 150C then plunged into cold water to see if they resist a thermic shock, and dropped from the height of a kitchen counter on to a metal sheet to see if they shatter. They will be tested for stackability and then weighed and the glass thickness measured. If they pass, they are thrown in a bin and the production line is given a thumbs up. If they fail, everything stops and the machines are recalibrated.<\/p>\n It is not known who invented the company\u2019s trademark Picardie glass, the tumbler used in school canteens with a thick curved rim and semi-fluted shape that first appeared in 1954. The British design guru Patrick Taylor has ranked the Picardie alongside Levi\u2019s jeans and the Swiss Army knife as an icon of modern design. Taylor describes it as: \u201cAn object whose form gives the impression it was discovered rather than designed. It is the ultimate drinking vessel created by man, and of its type cannot be improved.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The instantly recognisable Picardie glasses.<\/span> Photograph: Magali Delporte\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Duralex says its glass is microwave, freezer and dishwasher-safe and will not turn cloudy or lose its colour, which is in the glass rather than on it. When they do break, Duralex glasses shatter into small pieces rather than shards, reducing the injury risk.<\/p>\n Jo\u00ebl Cardon, 59, who has worked at the factory for 35 years, said the soaring cost of gas and electricity were the firm\u2019s largest and most worrying expense.<\/p>\n On his screen, the oven containing the liquid glass showed a temperature of 1,440C. It can never be allowed to cool or the glass will solidify. Another screen showed the factory was using 360 cubic metres of gas an hour. According to the regulator Ofgem, the average UK house uses 97.3 cubic metres of gas a year.<\/p>\n <\/span>Duralex\u2019s oven, in the background, is held at a temperature of 1,440C.<\/span> Photograph: Magali Delporte\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Last weekend, potential investors were asked to come good on their promises on a first come, first served basis. They will be issued with securities that pay 8% interest over seven years but give no company voting rights. The maximum investment was set at \u20ac1,000.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to involve as many people as possible but with almost \u20ac20m in pledges obviously some people will be disappointed,\u201d Marciano said.<\/p>\n Since the company became a staff cooperative, turnover has increased by 22% and Marciano said he hoped Duralex would be breaking even by 2027.<\/p>\n The \u20ac5m raised will be used to modernise the factory and develop new products. These include a partnership with the \u00c9lys\u00e9e presidential palace shop to sell a set of three of its Gigogne glasses in red, white and blue, marked RF for R\u00e9publique Fran\u00e7aise.<\/p>\n <\/span>Set of 3 Gigogne glasses in Tricolor, advertised online for \u20ac24.90<\/span> Photograph: boutique.elysee.fr<\/p>\n Duralex plans to commission moulds to make \u201cpint\u201d glasses with a measure line for British pubs and bars and the US, both regions identified by the company as untapped markets.<\/p>\n \u201cSelling abroad is more difficult because there isn\u2019t the same nostalgia for Duralex as there is in France,\u201d said Vincent Vallin, the head of strategy and development. \u201cInterest in the company is high and this is positive, but now we have to focus on increasing sales.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Drop a Duralex glass and it will most likely bounce, not break. The French company itself has tumbled several times in the past two decades and always bounced back, but never quite as spectacularly as when, earlier this month, it asked the public for money. An appeal for \u20ac5m (\u00a34.4m) of emergency funding to secure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[19781,2918,1609,19780,364,11494,1119],"class_list":{"0":"post-34945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-duralex","9":"tag-france","10":"tag-french","11":"tag-glassmaker","12":"tag-people","13":"tag-pours","14":"tag-save"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Beloved French brand<\/h2>\n
\u2018The ultimate drinking vessel\u2019<\/h2>\n