L’Oréal opens world’s largest hair colour facility in Mexico
The new 32,000m2 facility, which is situated in the state of San Luis Potosi and is the largest of its kind in the world, doubles the company’s production capacity in Mexico, and will complement the company’s existing hair color facility in Mexico city.
When the investment was first announced in June last year, the company had estimate that the project would have a cost of $50m, but the final figure has grown alongside the scale of the project, which is on a 10 hectare site on the Logistic Industrial Park II.
Built to eco-friendly and sustainable standards
The new facility has been built to an eco-friendly and sustainable design and is said to use 60 per cent less water and emit 60 per cent CO2 compared to conventional facilities, figures that fall in line with company goals to decrease waste, water and emissions by half by the year 2015.
“The L’Oréal Group has decided to open its new production plant in Mexico, since this is one of the most strategic countries for the Group, a key crossroad between North America and Latin America,” said Jean-Philippe Blanpain, executive vice-president of operations L’Oreal.
"To have built our largest hair color plant here shows once more our deep commitment to provide the market with superior quality products and great value “ Blanpain continued.
Turning to growth markets for investment
The opening of the facility, which will employ 400 full-time staff and 800 indirect workers, falls in line with the company’s ambition to extend its global reach by dividing its production up into specific areas of specialization focused on key business segments.
With markets in Western Europe and North America proving to be particularly slow in the wake of the global recession, the company is concentrating many of these efforts on what it refers to as ‘new markets’, mainly in Latin America and Asia Pacific.
In particular the plant will be focused on the fast growth in both Mexico and other Latin American markets, which underlines the strategy to centre its hair color manufacturing facilities for the region in the country.
Mexico and Latin America reflect ongoing expansion
“Given the growth of our business in the country and our industrial expertise, Mexico is key to attaining our goal of our next billion new consumers,” said Alexandre Popoff, Executive Vice-President Latin America Zone L’Oréal.
“The plant of San Luis Potosi reflects our confidence in the ongoing expansion of the Mexican market and that of the Latin American market itself."
Although the company has just announced the official opening of the facility, it actually started operations back in April of this year, and is targeting production of 100 million units in 2013 and 210 million units by 2014 – a figure that will give a combined capacity of 400 million units in Mexico.
