THE SEVENTH MATERIAL · PRESENCE AND FOOTPRINT
5 production sites. Sales in eighty countries. Around forty patents.
Specifying The Seventh Material means relying on whoever makes and delivers it. That is not a question of reputation. It is a question of counting.
What stands behind the material.
Five production sites. More than 1000 employees. Subsidiaries and offices in 12 countries. Sales in 80.
Serge Ferrari Group is listed on Euronext Growth Paris and has been family-controlled since 1973.
Why it became necessary to be there.
For a long time the group exported through agents and distributors, with no establishment abroad. That model reached its limit when projects – in architecture particularly – grew beyond what the arrangement could follow. Buildings are decided locally, and the decisions happen early.
The first subsidiary opened in the United States in 2002. Japan followed in 2004, a small and highly technical market. Hong Kong in 2007, covering China and South-East Asia. Brazil in 2012. Subsidiaries and offices in Europe, India and the Middle East were added through the late 2010s.
What that bought was detailed knowledge of local markets, and of the people in them who specify and order. For anyone specifying The Seventh Material, it means the person on the other end knows the market the building is going into.
Specification requires documentation, in a language you can specify in.
The group site exists in five languages, and the English, Spanish, Italian and German versions carry the same structure and the same information as the French. A specifier working in Milan, Madrid or Düsseldorf has the documentation their colleagues have.
The Seventh Material is specified on its characteristics. Having those characteristics in your own language is not a convenience. It is a condition of access.
Making, researching, reporting.
The group produces on five sites, in France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Taiwan.
Research is not kept apart from production. The research centre of more than a thousand square metres sits on the La Tour-du-Pin production site, where the material is made.
Across the Group, one research centre and four laboratories unite more than fifty researchers, supporting a portfolio of nearly forty active patents and continuously advancing the science of composite materials.
What the group commits to on its environmental footprint is published and open to scrutiny.
