Innovation: JLB DÉVELOPPEMENT is strengthening its industrial capacity!

JLB DÉVELOPPEMENT has made significant investments in order to achieve its vision of becoming a major player in the manufacturing of dietary products in France. Our main focuses were:
● Developing our industrial estate
● Purchasing and modernising new tools and equipment
● Further developing our production capacity
● Making significant investments in R&D

We have made major investments, since JLB DÉVELOPPEMENT was integrated into the Lactalis group, to ensure that our company meets the same industrial and quality standards as the rest of the group on our 3 sites (JLB DÉVELOPPEMENT in Brignais, JLB PROCESS in Isère and Drôme). Our aim is to meet the strict requirements of our customers and major brands, as well as their production needs.

This is why we wanted to increase our production capacity. For example, we have invested in a new bottling line for our Isère factory as it specialises in the production of semi-liquids, liquids and batters. This has allowed us to produce larger volumes, increase production rates and meet the requirements, in particular time-to-market needs, of major international brands.

This major investment in new tools and equipment has allowed us to optimise the security of the production environment with regards to machinery and our employees. As such, our employees have been able to benefit from improved working conditions and a better quality of life at work.

For this approach, we completely redealt the cards and started from a blank page to be written with our operators. We have redesigned our factory plans, rethought the compartmentalisation of work booths and brainstormed on improving break areas. And our efforts have been rewarded! All this work has enabled JLB DÉVELOPPEMENT to obtain an ISO 22000 certification for our two industrial sites in Isère and Drôme.

Finally, the Research and Development (R&D) department has also been of great importance for JLB in recent years. It is for this reason that we relocated our R&D department to our head office in Brignais, so that the team could work in close collaboration with management. This reflects our strong strategic focus on offering innovations that are in line with market trends. Our customers are looking for clean label, effective formulas with innovative ingredients. This is what we proactively offer with our turnkey product concepts. We developed a sports recovery shot made using Kaneka ubiquinol. This concept won over our customer NONINU who launched the Ubiquinol Recovery Shot under their brand. We will continue to develop our turnkey product concepts, as they demonstrate our capacity for innovation.

What are the next objectives for JLB DÉVELOPPEMENT in terms of strategy and development?

There’s no shortage of projects to work on! Our short-term challenges are as follows:
● To create new thematic production units
● To offer new galenics to our customers
● To develop our export activity
● To work on issues related to sustainability and eco-design

In January 2021, we will open our secure production area for powdered baby products. It’s like a second factory within the factory! We will maintain the highest quality standards.

In addition, we will continue making investments to complement our range of products by installing a capsule filler for dry products. This will allow us to offer customers that already purchase our tablets or drinks an additional range of supplements in capsule form. Incidentally, SYNADIET has found that French citizens prefer capsules over any other form of galenic.
I’ll wrap up by talking about our final area of focus: sustainability and eco-design. So that we can propose sustainable and eco-friendly products to our customers, we constantly monitor these current and important issues. For example, we are currently trying to reduce the environmental footprint of our factories. We also source recyclable or biodegradable packaging solutions.

Finally, we want to continue to develop the export side of our business and build on the progress that we made in 2020. To do this, we plan on investing in staff and in marketing resources. The sales team will be strengthened and you will definitely be seeing more of us on LinkedIn and this blog .