News from business intelligence in Basse Normandy

Next November, a very small business called MF Tech located in Argentan (Orne département) will be three years old. It has come a long way since its creation by Emmanuel Flouvat and Arnaud Ménard! When they set up the business, their main asset was having the main ingredients on tap, i.e., a promising technology, skills, expertise and courage to spare, and the risky undertaking has now been crowned with the successful marketing of their products. After having carved out a niche for their paddle-sticks, especially on the export market that now accounts for 80% of their production; thanks to filament winding technology, they are gradually breaking into different markets, ranging from the oil to the space industries and including top level car racing.

Tourlaville-based Dielen Laboratoires (Manche département) is a small biotech business with six employees. Set up in 1978 by an agricultural scientist called Bernard Noël, the business has gradually carved out a niche on the food supplement market. Its raw material is blue ling. Dielen Laboratoires extracts peptides from the fish and uses them to produce food supplements. Today the small business is looking for another partner to develop a supplement that will increase memory performance.

ISMO 61 - four letters and 2 numbers that stand for the Institut Supérieur du Moule, i.e., the Alençon-based Higher Institute of Molding in the Orne département (61). ISMO, which was created a mere ten years ago in partnership with the Orne General Council, Orne Développement and the Orne Industrial Union of Metallurgy, is both a training facility and a renowned technical center fostering innovation and ongoing dialogue for the entire profession. Consequently, Ismo61.com is the essential Web reference for the molding industry. If you are looking for training courses in molding or you're a business looking for solutions that meet your expectations, go now to www.ismo61.com, the Institute will certainly have a course or a service for you.

France is sorely in want of entrepreneurs. The Minister in charge of Industry and Small Businesses and Industries should come to Basse-Normandie and get some advice from the Sevestre family. Because the Sevestre's have known what the word 'entrepreneur' means for several decades. While many talk much about the word in their speeches, this family - the father, his brother and their children - has acted and successfully so. Marc Sevestre, one of the children, has been CEO of Axe Meca since January 1, 2007. He is taking over from his father as head of the precision mechanics business that has two facilities, one in Argences and the other in Lisieux, in the heart of Calvados.