Vetropack: Stories of glass and pickles

The announced closure of the Saint-Prex glassworks, founded in 1911 by Henri Cornaz, the grandfather of the current president of the Vetropack holding company, created a stir in the canton. The tear is all the more painful because at the time this manufacturer of packaging glass exploited unrivaled technology, which allowed it to gradually expand in Switzerland and beyond, through judiciously managed takeover and merger operations. , first in Bülach, today its headquarters, then to South Moravia (Kyjov), Austria (Kremsmünster and Pöchlarn), as well as Slovakia, Croatia, Ukraine, Italy, Moldova and Romania , in short, throughout Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

The group, listed on the stock exchange, has developed various related services and regularly refined its production methods, but nevertheless remains attached to a standard manufacturing sector, particularly exposed to competition and, as a result, sensitive to differences in costs and salaries for the ‘essential. However, Switzerland, as we know, is rather poorly rated on this point, whatever its efforts in terms of productivity. Globalization here is unforgiving.

The adventure of the Lübbenau pickle, told the other day on the Arte channel, is revealing of what we could call “the other side of free trade”. Here is a product, with a long tradition, which has long remained a local specialty (the Spreewälder Gurken), whose notoriety does not extend beyond the limits of the Upper Spree Forest, this eastern part of the Land of Brandenburg, about a hundred kilometers from Berlin. When, at the end of the 19th century, the railway made it possible to travel from the region to the capital in a few hours – instead of the days that had previously taken place – the Lübben pickle producers saw their sales soar, and the specialty has achieved such fame over the years that it has become to this day one of the rare products from the former GDR to survive, and is even protected by a PGI at EU level. entire since 1999. It is here a new technology, rail transport, associated with a comparative advantage by definition unrivaled, a particular terroir, which ensured the growth, then the permanence over time, of a local production exceeding today ‘today the 35,000 tonnes and employing a significant number of employees (it should be verified that the jars in which Spreewald gherkins are sold come from one of the Vetropack factories…)

No naivety

Globalization is of course not the result of containers and cucumbers alone, even if its opposite, withdrawal into oneself, would see many of its supporters delighted to witness the repatriation of the molding of some and the bottling of others. But let’s be serious. Global trade, favored both by new technologies and by the lowering of tariff borders, has admittedly left many people behind while it has raised the standard of living of a large majority of consumers.

Backtrack? You have to be a little naive to believe this, as the advantages of free trade outweigh its defects. Moreover, history teaches that drawbridges, supposed to protect against the invader (even today Chinese), have never durably protected fortified castles. On the other hand, the inequalities created by globalization can be corrected by policies, when they are more intelligent than the simple erection of barriers.

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