THE HISTORY OF BAKER PERKINS GUITTARD, CHELLES, PARIS, FRANCE

Malaxeurs Guittard was acquired by Baker Perkins Holdings for £1.113m in March 1978 providing Baker Perkins with its first wholly-owned manufacturing facility on the continent of Europe. Employing 70, it produced a range of advanced mixers for the chemical, plastics and food industries. The Chelles factory was built in 1975 and replaced the one in which Yves Guittard started the company in Montreuil, near Paris in 1948. The founder was elected president directeur general of the new company.

Baker Perkins Guittard became part of the group's world-wide chemical machinery division of Baker Perkins Inc. Saginaw. Guittard mixers were to be manufactured in Paris and sold world-wide. "Over-flow" requirements were to come from the Stoke-on-Trent factory with Baker Perkins Inc. providing broad marketing direction in the USA but with Guittard's US agent, Jaygo, handling most of the sales.

BP Guittard only broke even in 1980/81 but showed significant improvement in both sales and profit in the following year. The company generally performed better than its larger American sub-group partner, making respectable profits up to the time of the merger with APV in 1987 despite a generally depressed international market.

Albert Fontrier was appointed chairman and managing director in ------?????

1980 Organisation Chart

At the beginning of 1983, Baker Perkins Guittard became part of the process equipment division of Baker Perkins Inc. headed by Bernie Lieberman. BP Guittard also acted as an agent in France for products manufactured at both Saginaw and Stoke-on-Trent.

The Chelles factory became the group's main centre for the design, development and manufacture of horizontal batch mixers and horizontal batch mixer/extruders. In 1983, the company won an order, jointly with Baker Perkins Inc., for what were thought to be the world's largest mixers.

Much of the equipment supplied by BP Guittard was for specialised applications and a test laboratory/customer demonstration centre was a vital aid both to sales and the company's design engineers. The existing centre at Chelles was doubled in size in 1983.

A new factory, including offices and demonstration laboratory, was opened in 1986 on an industrial estate to the east of Paris. BP Guittard was to be a distributor for Sterling Extruder machinery in all BP Guittard territories and the new factory would become the European manufacturing centre for blow moulding products. Also in 1986, BP Guittard became one of the four profit centres of a new chemical machinery sub-group.

The 1995 APV Group Annual Report states that the business of APV Chemical Inc was sold in April 1995 for £1.6m.