Published by Farmers Guide, January 2006.

Hi-tech trailer building in France

Rolland trailer's will host a massive party at its base in North-west France in early January, and there's even hope that a government minister will attend. The fact that the company is celebrating its 60th year in business in 2006 is just a coincidence, however (according to Rolland's Managing Director, Béatrice Le Gall, the French don't mark diamond anniversaries the way we do), the real focus of the celebration is the opening of the firm's new production facility.

While other trailer manufacturers are switching production to Eastern Europe or even further afield, Rolland has taken a different approach and invested £7.5 million in a brand new factory on a green-field site at Tréflévénez, in the country's Finistère department.

The new plant would satisfy any engineering company's dreams with 16,000 square metres under cover, including 1,500 square metres of office space, and the opportunity to bring all aspects of the firm's operations under one roof. But in building this factory Rolland has gone a step further and has attempted to future-proof the operation as well.

"When it became clear that we couldn't remain in our original factory, because housing had encroached on the site and the local community was keen for us to relocate, we started work on our strategy to build a factory for the future," Mrs Le Gall told Farmers Guide.

"Our initial aims were to: locate a new, large site away from housing; put in place a quality manufacturing facility which was environmentally friendly; and to improve working conditions for our staff."

That process was started in 2000 by Mrs Le Gall's father, Jean Yves Emily, who became Managing Director in 1978, taking over from the company's founder (and Mr Emily's father in law), Joseph Rolland. He retired late last year when the factory was completed.

The new facility certainly appears to have achieved everything Mr Emily and his daughter wanted, but it's the plant's environmental credentials that really sets it apart from the competition.

Mrs Le Gall is happy to state for the record that the family paid £1.5 million more than really necessary to meet all current environmental rules and regulations (although the company did get half of that back in grants). In doing so, however, they have been able to install a state-of-the-art paint process that is not only among the cleanest of its kind in terms of emissions into the atmosphere, the finish it provides is unique among trailer manufacturers.

The new paint facility takes up one corner of the new factory and by being built partly underground is about as high as a three-storey house. It starts with a shotblasting chamber, which will hold anything the company makes. Every component passes through the shotblaster, which uses steel pellets about 2mm in diameter to remove any traces of corrosion from the metal to be painted. It also leaves the metal surface ever so slightly pitted to assist paint adhesion.

Next, the components are washed in water in the first of a series of large vats, again big enough to allow the company's biggest trailer body to be fully submerged. This removes any dust from the parts before they are transferred to a vat full of degreaser.

The next vat contains phosphate solution that prepares the parts for the most important part of the process, the vat that contains the undercoat.

The paint facility as the Rolland factory uses an electro-coating process to apply the undercoat. While spray painting could never get onto every part of the company's machines, the new process allows every single surface - even inside box sections - to get an even coat of paint.

Put simply, the parts to be painted are lowered into a vat that contains paint particles suspended - through constant agitation - in water. When electricity is passed through the metal items to be painted, the paint particles are attracted to the metal and produce a uniform coating over its surface.

This process only takes a couple of minutes, and after the parts have been lifted out of the vat and then cured in an oven at 215 degrees Celsius the resulting finish is claimed to be as good as that obtained by galvanising.

That's only half the story, however. The undercoated items now get their topcoat which, in the best Citröen Picasso tradition, is applied in a sealed chamber by robots. The paint used this time is a fine powder that sticks to the parts and is again cured in an oven to give the finished surface.

The new paint facility has a made a massive difference to the amount of emissions coming out of the factory according to Mrs Le Gall.

"By no longer using solvent and liquid paints, we have cut emissions into the atmosphere by 99%," she said. "Not only that, but because we can recycle the unused paint powder, 98% of the paint we buy now ends up on our machinery."

And Rolland and the environment are not the only winners from the new paint process. According to Rolland's UK Sales Manager, Alex Clothier, buyer of Rolland's trailers will benefit as well.

"There's no doubt that this will extend the life of our trailers," he told Farmers Guide. "All the tubes and hollows are painted by using this process and are protected from corrosion. And farmers living in coastal areas are likely to be among the first to reap the rewards from their equipment lasting much longer."

Rolland has about 90 different size or shape of trailer in its catalogue, ranging from small flatbeds for the amenity sector to large dump trailers for construction; and, of course, just about every conceivable agricultural trailer in between, including muckspreaders and livestock carriers.

The firm is the market leader in its home market with close to 10% of the 23,000 trailers sold annually in France. And it's worth noting that there are about 100 agricultural trailer makers in the country, although many build no more than one trailer each week.

The UK is the company's second biggest market with sales currently at 150 trailers a year and rising. Rolland's market here is split evenly three ways between muckspreaders, livestock trailers and trailers for general haulage, although Mr Clothier notes that industrial sales are growing.

The new factory has given Rolland the ability to move to a two-shift system and Mrs Le Gall estimates that a 50% increase in production will be possible, although she is just as keen to see turnover increase by bringing in third party parts to go through the paint process.

As the third generation of the same family to manage the business, there's undoubted satisfaction in running a successful business at the top of its game and providing secure, rural employment to its employees.