Our logistics
Most of our goods come from Europe and Asia, with 45% of the tonnage being imported by sea. In 2024, our efforts to make post-delivery transport greener enabled us to transport 123 containers by rail or barge from the port of Fos. We have 1,290,180 square feet of storage space, with a capacity of 115,960 pallets and 236 handling machines. We keep 62,629 items in stock. Our teams of 199 women and men prepared and shipped 578,884 orders over the year, representing nearly 50,000 tons. The efficiency of our flows and the digitization of our platforms remain constant priorities in order to facilitate the work of our teams. The average turnover per order is €1,093.
Our subsidiaries may have one or more storage centers from which they ship their customers’ orders. They guarantee delivery times of:
- 24/72 hours for France.
- 2 to 6 days for other countries, depending on the destination.
- Sodeco Valves, based in Belgium, guarantees delivery within 4 hours in its catchment area.
This requires:
Strong partnerships with reliable carriers, selected annually through a tender process.
Optimized inventory management (appropriate stock levels and “zero stockouts”).
Supply Chain Management
Technological developments and recent events have made monitoring an essential strategic lever. It is vital for optimizing our performance, identifying innovations, and ensuring informed decision-making. That is why we regularly participate in conferences and maintain constant dialogue with the supply chain ecosystem (integrators, peers, international monitoring) to enrich our approach.
2024 was a year of consolidation for our projects:
ThermAppro – This custom-developed decision-making tool, which incorporates machine learning, enables us to optimize our procurement. After an intensive development phase, 2024 saw the stabilization of the tool and its deployment at Thermador. It is now used by five subsidiaries, some of which manage more than 80% of their stored product lines.
Optimization of the Sferaco platform and upstream transport
The project to optimize the Sferaco platform, launched to support its growth over the next five to ten years, is continuing. After modeling and studies, a call for tenders for integrators was conducted in 2024. The contract is scheduled to be signed in 2025, with the solution to be rolled out in 2026-2027. At the same time, to optimize our maritime imports, we launched our first group call for tenders from freight forwarders at the end of 2024, with a view to finding optimized solutions for 2025.
Our sales activity
51,818 visits to 33,734 customer accounts
430 customers visited the group
429,339 calls per year: advice, prices, availability, after-sales service
The role of our General Managers and sales teams is to be in constant contact with our customers, whether in the field or on the telephone. They have in-depth knowledge of the product ranges they promote, and if some of our wholesale customers receive representatives from several Group subsidiaries on the same day, they never complain about wasted time.
Every week, we carry out training activities in the field or on our premises, with our customers’ teams.
Our sedentary technical sales teams handle all types of telephone inquiries very quickly: prices, availability, after-sales service, technical information…
Some of our wholesale customers have developed a web-based business. At the same time, pure players and marketplaces have entered our markets. We welcome these new distribution channels as opportunities, and are investing to ensure that our technical resources and the expertise of our teams are up to the challenge. Modern Internet sites, enrichment and distribution of product data, brand referencing, adaptation of pricing policies, digital marketing, online videos, social networks, influencers…
Virtual Reality
Since 2021, Opaline’s 3D studio has been designing immersive projects for the building and industrial sectors. In four years, three virtual environments (detached house, commercial building, and apartment building) have been created to contextualize the products of our six building subsidiaries. The single-family home, adapted for VR headsets for trade shows, benefited in 2024 from an enhanced version offering new ergonomics and guided tours.
On the industrial side, interactive “exploded view” valves now highlight the technical features of the products for training and sales purposes. In partnership with four subsidiaries (Sectoriel, Sferaco, Sodeco, Syveco), a virtual factory featuring a storage tank is now operational. It will be expanded with two new areas in 2025 and 2026, illustrating our capacity for innovation in the service of the customer experience.
Distribution channels
Our subsidiaries act as useful, efficient interfaces between a large number of manufacturers around the world and increasingly demanding wholesalers, DIY superstores, factories, pool professionals, e-merchants and marketplaces.