L’ORÉAL: “a pure player in beauty for 105 years”

Tuesday afternoon was dedicated to the world of beauty with a visit to the L’ORÉAL plant in Jababeka. The factory is producing skin and haircare products for south-east Asia. It was opened in 2012, employs around 450 employees and with the size of premises, 220 000m², it is the biggest in the entire L’ORÉAL group. Concerning the final sales, 46% of production is made for the local Indonesian market, 35% goes to Thailand and the rest of 19% is exported to other ASEAN countries.
After the plant director Mr. Guillaume Delaplace gave us an introduction to the L’ORÉAL story and supply chain practices, we were taken on a tour around the production lines. They contain weighing, processing and filling. What impressed us most was the filling and packaging section for cosmetics; not only for the state-of-the-art equipment but also for the subtle, sweet, fruity smells of perfumes used in the creams. Today the process is partly manual and partly robotic. The plan is to make this section fully automated with no need for human work besides workers in the control room and machine settings. One of such fully robotic stations produces 2,000,000 units (imagine cream pots) a month. Recently the total face care production accounts for around 12,000,000 units per month and hair care around 2,000,000 units per month. Just to show how cosmetics are popular in Indonesia, there are 500 of new products introduced by L’ORÉAL every year.

Written by Alena Laskova, Matthew Heaford and Levan Merkviladze