Guerlain expands production and prevents counterfeiting

The challenge

Guerlain, one of France’s oldest perfume and cosmetics houses, required an end-of-line solution, to fight counterfeiting and ensure product care. A subsidiary of the luxury goods house LVMH, Guerlain was keen to possess a compact solution that could be installed in their facility, known as La Ruche (The Beehive), based in the heart of France’s cosmetics valley. Sidel has a strong reputation within this world-renowned cluster, with many luxury brands choosing its robotic case packers, palletisers and combi-solutions for the high levels of efficiency and product care that this exclusive industry demands.

The solution

Sidel’s robotic packing and palletising combi solution has been designed to function in a compact space of less than 20m², and manages the physical flow of products, cases and pallets. Capable of handling 60 cartons of skincare product bottles per minute in four formats, Guerlain can – at any time – guarantee product origin and full characteristics by searching its central database. This is achieved through each carton, case and pallet being tagged using barcodes and labels, which are read, recorded and aggregated into the Guerlain central database. As a result of this, Guerlain can remove any counterfeit products that are not recorded, and identify any product distributed in the wrong marketplace. Cartons are fully protected from infeed, batch collation and case packing by an adapted belt and guides, fitted with a protective felt covering to ensure limited abrasion and frictions.

The outcome

Guerlain is now able to benefit from Sidel technology, also used by the Champagne, cognac, and pharmaceutical sectors, and which is renowned for its traceability and aggregation capabilities. It uses complex and stringent serialisation and track & trace systems, with real-time marking and tracking. Sidel’s end-of-line equipment is asked to generate more than 4,000 information exchanges per pallet to control the full quality process. It also keeps a high level of machine availability and efficiency, with error margins of less than 1% per production order.

"We were aware of Sidel’s reputation for high levels of traceability and were very impressed by its ability to tailor and finetune the automation to our process needs and traceability requirements."

Aurélien Bernier

Investment Capacity Project Manager at Guerlain

Between 2019 and 2021, three Sidel and Serac Combis were installed at the bottling facility of Lesieur in Coudekerque (Northern France). So the oil, sauce and condiment company can now produce lightweighted bottles and use recycled PET (rPET).