LThis trend started three to four years ago and has led to a 20% decline in sales of cases dedicated to wine and spirits in the last two years. The trend is that for some customers, cardboard is preferred as packaging because it is “recyclable” and actually binds their products together.r CSR approach (Corporate Social Responsibility). Substitution, and especially its “environmental justification”, is frowned upon by wooden crate manufacturers who decide to exceed expectations…
LThis trend started three to four years ago and has led to a 20% decline in sales of cases dedicated to wine and spirits in the last two years. The trend is that for some customers, cardboard is preferred as packaging because it is “recyclable” and actually binds their products together.r CSR approach (Corporate Social Responsibility). Substitution, and especially its “environmental rationale”, is poorly received by wooden crate manufacturers who decide to move beyond their competitive urges to combine and create. Alliance France wooden crate (AFCB). The Alliance, which brings together nine crate companies (VSE and artisan SMEs), including eight from Gironde, representing 90% of the players in the sector, aims to remind with one voice the basics of the wooden crate and present arguments against the conquest of cardboard. .
“We created this alliance to restore the discourse of truth: our raw materials are ecologically virtuous”
In the workshops of the Legendre and Lureau casket factory in Sablons (33), we begin by “marking” the various parts of the future casket. Hot stamping, burnt marking or ink, the names of the Gironde castles appear on the wood to be assembled by hand or by machine according to traditional know-how. Here, as with the other eight countries that signed the Alliance, there is no cure, no transformation. Wood. Raw. Therefore, unlike cardboard, a much reduced ecological footprint in terms of water and energy consumption, especially during the second reuse.
“We started this alliance to restore the discourse of truth: our raw materials are ecologically virtuous. Wood is renewable in sustainably managed forests under the PEFC label. The advantage of used pine is its carbon sequestration, and when a standing tree reaches maturity at about fifty years of age and this asset declines, the tree is felled. The crate manufacturing process is purely mechanical and creates no waste,” emphasizes Myriam Donne, president of Caisserie Legendre et Lureau and wooden crate secretary of Alliance France.
“Renewable” material
Note also that at the end of its life, the wooden box finds its usefulness as a container on the luggage rack of a bicycle, as a birdhouse or as an element of a future library or, if it is too damaged, in a chain of existing books. valorization is converted into biomass and therefore renewable energy. Unlike cardboard, we’re not talking about “recyclable” material here, but “renewable” material. And the cashiers intend to advance their arguments on this very condition.
Comparative tests
However, we can make a small argument about the origin of the pine used. “Yes, the vast majority come from Galicia (Spain) and a smaller proportion from the Landes pine. It is of European origin, labeled and dated. Galician sawmills specialize in this fate, while ours concentrate on parquet and underlays. Galician pine is also lighter than Landes pine, with fewer knots, less resin and is more box-friendly,” notes AFCB treasurer Frank Nardo.
But what do wooden crates bring to their destination? “Our customers are wineries, merchants, winemakers from Nouvelle-Aquitain, as well as from Burgundy and the south-east of France. To support our arguments with our customers about the advantages of wood, we turned to the FCBA Technological Institute, an industrial technical center for the forest and wood sector, which performs compression tests: a wooden box is resistant to 14 tons of pressure. Cardboard is deformed from 2 tons. Not to mention the tree’s resistance to changes in temperature and humidity,” adds Camille Lebrun, president of the Alliance. And to determine that a comparative life cycle analysis with cardboard is ongoing
Currently, the Alliance intends to make itself heard among professionals as well as consumers and government authorities to “inform their choices”. And the price, didn’t we say anything about it? “Each bottle in a wooden box of six bottles costs between 0.40 and 0.70 euros,” said the president. More expensive than cardboard. “But persistent…”
It brings together nine SMEs with a total of 300 employees, producing 10 million cases per year for an annual turnover of 45 million euros: Abzac craterie, Caisserie du Bazadais, Bergey, Caisserie bordelaise, Caisserie des grands vignes, Legendre and Lureau, Caisserie, Caisserie. -Louise, Pierre Goujon, CECD.