AMB Mécapole, in Bussière-Dunoise, produces parts for aeronautics and space. The Creuse company was able to position itself on this global market and then weather the Covid crisis and its perils. Sixty years after its creation, it keeps its feet on the ground but looks far into the horizon.
It starts as a DIY project in the back of the garage, then it ends up flying all over the world. This is not the success story of a large Californian IT firm.
But the story of AMB, for Ateliers Mécaniques de Bussière, which from Bussière-Dunoise, nestled in the bocage of western Creuse, manufactures very high precision parts for aeronautics and space.
60 years this year
Today backed by the Mécapole group, AMB is the archetype of a rural company that has kept its feet on the ground while looking very far ahead. A company that has been able to innovate and reinvent itself to keep pace with market developments, without ever forgetting human value. “We favor know-how over know-how,” summarizes Sébastien Jean, Deputy Managing Director of AMD.
His own story sums up the state of mind that prevails here: first a quality specialist at Michelin, he joined the Bussière-Dunoise company in the early 2000s. “I was from Creusois. But I had no idea there was such a gem here,” he still marvels.
At the time, AMD was beginning a shift towards aeronautics, in connection with the Sagem site which then existed in Aubusson. To give itself the means, the Bussiere company carried out its first extension (1998). Twenty years later, Sébastien Jean took over management, with a new expansion project. But it will be postponed because of Covid.
No matter, the company decides to do better to get through the crisis. “It was a strategic choice not to downsize as so many others were doing, but rather to take care of our know-how and modernize ourselves. »
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Taking full advantage of the recovery measures, it plays in particular on the energy parameter: 1,000m2 of solar panels are installed on the roof for self-consumption, and the oil heating is replaced by a reversible heat pump. The bet pays off when energy prices soar in 2022.
Especially since at the same time, the markets in which AMB is positioned are experiencing their spectacular post-Covid rebound. In this niche sector of micromechanics, there are now only 4 or 5 companies in France where there were around ten before the crisis.
A medium-term objective of 80 jobs
The crisis, which also showed how important, to secure supplies and guarantee quality, it was to favor European production, if not French.
Result: AMB Mécapole has shown growth of 22% since 2018. And now, the turnover which was 3.8 million euros last financial year should reach 4.5 million next year. While the site has just gone from 36 to 45 employees in one year. The director's forecasts are for nearly 80 people over the next four years.
One of the main challenges now being to find these human resources locally, or to attract them here. This is why the company insists on internal training and motivating perspectives: the pre-Covid extension project came out of the box; and it goes hand in hand with two new machine tools (an investment of around a million euros).
A quick tour of the workshops allows you to identify this famous industrial “jewel” of Creuse, and the state of mind that reigns there: a chain made up of enormous machine tools neighboring with a space worthy of a watchmaking workshop where the we work under a microscope – the precision must often be down to the micron.
IT and automation coexist with the human eye and common sense. For example, at the point of entry of raw materials, metal bars of all kinds: each reference is still painted according to a color code previously established empirically by the founder in his garage…
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