Today we meet Davy Gueranger at Corlet Imprimeur 360° in the Corlet Routage department.
Can you tell us about your career with the Group and your responsibilities?
I joined the company 20 years ago as a team leader. I was then promoted to workshop manager before becoming assistant to the Corlet routing site manager around 5 years ago. Today, and for the last three years, I’ve been Site Manager.
Can you explain what you do at Corlet Routage?
For my part, I have responsibilities at site level. What I did when I became site manager was to create a cross-functional approach at departmental level, so as to ensure communication between the IT department, the manufacturing department, managed by Gabrielle, and the two workshop managers, Joackim and Claude, whom I set up to manage the two teams working from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.. I also have a special relationship with La Poste, which gives me access to direct contacts.
How many people work here and what do they do?
Around 25 people work in the Group’s Routing department. It is made up of different departments. The first is the IT department, where Dominique and Nathalie, two IT specialists, work. Their mission is to bring the addresses received by the customer into line with postal standards, so that the mail can be deposited on the Caen platform.
Next comes the manufacturing department, which is made up of four people.Gabrielle, the Manufacturing Manager, assembles the files.She has three people under her supervision who help her to assemble the files, combine the documents, carry out the checks and send the proofs to the customers.These employees are also in charge of postal slips.
The team also includes two warehousemen who handle shipments. Then there are two teams dedicated to paper-wrapping, envelope-wrapping and manual work. Paper-wrapping replaced film-wrapping a year ago.
Yes, because now at the routing stage, there’s no more film wrapping!
Exactly. Since January 1, 2022 and following the AGEC law, PE film (polyethylene) has been banned, so we had to find solutions. These solutions include paper wrapping, as well as open routing, where the address is printed directly on the catalog without the use of envelopes. Then there’s the repositionable label solution, which is affixed to the back cover of the catalog. Finally, enveloping is another option. Many of our customers have already switched to either paper or envelope wrapping. Others have also switched to Home Compost film wrapping. Smaller quantities are handled manually with RAJA pouches.
In fact, we have many customers who used to work with opaque plastic film and didn’t want to switch to transparent paper. Today, at Corlet Routage, we are capable of opaque paper wrapping.
Absolutely. We had many requests from our customers who were using opaque plastic film, because they didn’t want to reveal their catalog through the film. So we had to do two things. The first was to switch to paper wrapping, whose transparency had not been validated by La Poste. We therefore had to carry out numerous tests to ensure that the product met the requirements of the company with the yellow cars. But, as you said, there was also the challenge of dealing with customers who didn’t want their contents to be seen, who switched from opaque grey film to opaque paper. Most of the work here therefore concerned the weight of the envelope paper. We used to work in microns for the plastic film. Now we work in grams for the paper. In our warehouse we now have three widths, 440 mm, 500 mm and 510 mm, in 65 and 40 grams.
Thank you, Davy. How many copies and up to how many can you work with?
But you still need a large print run. We’ve found that between 300 and 500 copies, it’s more cost-effective to sleeve by hand. It’s important to remember that the machine has to be set up before we start the wrapping process, which makes the relevant quantity slightly higher. From 500 or 600 copies upwards, we can switch to the machine.
Can you make a lot of copies in a day?
Yes, we’re capable of doing around 30,000 copies a day with two shifts. We’re currently working on our output to improve this figure. Not bad!
We’re constantly working to improve our performance!
What are the main issues you face today at Corlet Routage?
First of all, the elimination of plastic film. We were told that plastic film was to be phased out, but we weren’t given any solutions. So we had to find them ourselves. The second major problem is La Poste’s changing rates. Obviously, these changes are rarely to the advantage of the routers. The financial problem is that the router is always called into question. Compensation is given to customers, but it’s the router that invests in paper, not the customer.
What’s more, it’s a new technology. So there were adjustments to be made. Cadences have dropped, the work is different from filming, in fact it’s a totally different job. But we’re not discouraged, and we’re improving every day.
It’s quite an important transition. How are your customers reacting?
I just wanted to say that we’re increasingly helping our customers with upstream routing work.
What’s the current state of the industry?
The sector has been shaken up quite a bit. Volumes have fallen sharply. Customers are going digital, and volumes are falling as a result of higher rates. They’re focusing on more precise targeting of recipients.
Earlier, you mentioned La Poste. I’ve heard that rates are no longer the same. What can you tell me about this?
Rates are no longer the same. What’s more, our customers tend to get lost in the range of products on offer. As a router, we try to explain things to them, but it’s true that La Poste complicates things a little.
Here’s an example: as you may have seen on the news, the red priority letter has been discontinued and replaced by a performance letter, which in turn has taken the place of the green letter. Can you see the gobbledygook? At the same time, they’ve changed the delivery times. The performance letter has been changed to two days. So you pay more for a letter that arrives more slowly. The green letter, which had a two-day delivery time, was much cheaper and is now more expensive with a three-day delivery time instead of two. All in all, that sums up La Poste’s current offering. This creates questions and daily problems that we have to deal with. That’s why we’re trying to do our best to support customers, because even La Poste’s sales staff don’t go all the way to present the contract or the savings a customer could make.
It’s a good thing customers have you to enlighten them!
Yes, indeed.
Do you have any innovative projects in the pipeline?
We really want to establish the fact that we have paper coating in our workshops, and we really want to go into detail to take into account the weight of the paper so that it matches the catalog and the customer’s needs.
Make sure it works perfectly!
Exactly, but also to be able to personalize the paper. Since paper is less transparent than plastic film, we can afford to print more on it, which gives customers greater freedom in shaping their mailings.
I’ve seen test examples here before they even hit the market, and they’re really beautiful products. Here, with the service we offer, we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of!
I don’t think so. And we’re continuing to work on new possibilities like printing our customers’ logos, which look really good on paper.
Finally, what are Corlet Routage’s strengths?
Responsiveness. Many customers praise us for this. We’re very reactive when it comes to documents arriving in the morning. They arrive between 9 and 9:30 in the morning and are in the Post Office truck by 2pm. We have several files to process, so we really have to be very reactive. I’d also like to point out that this year I’ve been working a lot with customers, in particular to help them with contracts and postal rates, which are not well explained by La Poste sales staff. Quality is our second strong point. The Corlet Group is renowned for the quality of its finished products, and so is Corlet Routage.
You’ve got it: responsiveness, efficiency and, above all, advice. Corlet Routage supports its customers from start to finish. Thank you Davy for this interview.
Thank you.
Don’t hesitate to contact Davy or your Corlet Group sales representative. We look forward to welcoming you to Corlet Routage and showing you around our infrastructure.