Chief Executive Officer (Group CEO), FM Logistic
Jean-Christophe Machet (FM Logistic) : Livraison, quelles évolutions après la pandémie ?
Ce mardi 15 décembre, Jean-Christophe Machet, président du groupe FM Logistic, parle de stockages et de livraisons de ...
About Jean-christophe Machet
Jean-Christophe Machet, CEO of FM Logistic, has discussed the company's expansion and strategic priorities in various interviews. In July 2023, he stated that India is already one of FM Logistic's top three markets and that the company is "ready to invest today for long term" there, noting the group operates 95 sites with 5,000 employees in the country. He described the company's strategy as based on multi-customer tools and investing in a control tower to improve efficiency and sustainability, with a three-pillar agenda focused on social responsibility, green tools, and solutions to save CO2 emissions and costs. Machet has also spoken about the evolution of logistics following the pandemic, emphasizing the importance of mutualization and omnichannel distribution. He said in 2021 that the crisis "exacerbated weak signals" such as e-commerce and omnichannel retail, and that FM Logistic offers carbon evaluations to clients to work on reducing emissions. He has advocated for closer cooperation with public authorities to promote logistics careers and address hiring challenges, noting in 2019 that the company aimed to create 750 permanent jobs in France that year and calling for state-enterprise partnerships to train workers.
Transcript (16 segments)
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Interviewer0:01
BFM Business, 60 minutes business, our guest. With us this noon is Jean-Christophe Machet, president of FM Logistic. Hello. FM Logistic specializes in storage and delivery of branded consumer goods. You do both B2B and B2C. How are you?
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Jean-Christophe Machet0:24
Effectively, we are omnichannel. More than 60% of our revenue is omnichannel. We deliver our clients' products to stores, supermarkets, and directly to consumers.
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Interviewer0:38
Like all logistics companies, regardless of size, your activity evolved a lot during the pandemic. It was boosted. How has your business evolved? We recall that you took the helm of FM Logistic after your uncle. It's a family business created 55 years ago by three men, two strong men, Mr. Machet, hence FM Logistic. They decided to combine their strengths, skills, and values to build a group focused on the short term to supply populations with essential products. Today we are strong in these family business values but also in the modernity of a group with governance: 50% of our directors are family, 50% are great professionals who have joined us to combine the strength of family culture with the energy and modernity of these newcomers.
We were talking about the pandemic period, the needs of mass retail, the e-commerce boom that boosted your figures over the last two years. Sales increased by 200 million euros. You are present in 14 countries with about 300 warehouses today?
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Jean-Christophe Machet1:51
Absolutely, 14 countries, 300 warehouses, and all the transport upstream and downstream. We are an actor in a supply chain that we want to be sustainable. Of course, the supply chain has been disrupted. Our clients face these disruptions through increased inventory, but what is essential is to succeed upstream and downstream of these inventories: supply products and deliver them to the consumer via multiple means of transport: full truck, partial truck, urban delivery via electric vans, for example.
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Interviewer2:23
For example, electric vans. But does that mean you also manage fleets of trucks? You own them and manage them directly?
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Jean-Christophe Machet2:35
We manage and have more than 6,000 vehicles across the group worldwide. There are 300 warehouses and 6,000 vehicles upstream and downstream of our warehouses. These are our own vehicles or vehicles of partners we work with regularly. Ultimately, our clients entrust us with their flows, and we must be able to optimize them, often by mutualizing them. As a strategic partner of our clients, we want to bring a differentiating plus: mutualization. Our obsession at FM Logistic is long-term animation, creating value through our operations by mutualizing our clients' activities. For example, putting 5 or 6 clients of the same activity in the same warehouse, we can deliver those clients at the same time in the same vehicle that will be filled to 95-100% instead of 70%.
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Interviewer3:29
So you insist a lot on values. Have you decided to be a mission-driven company, or do you consider it goes without saying and there is no need to proclaim it through a change of status?
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Jean-Christophe Machet3:42
Our three founders inscribed the values in the company, but first they lived them. They transmitted them to the second generation and to the third generation that has joined us in recent months. The group's shareholders are very attached to these long-term values: putting people and the client at the heart of the system, but with this concern for the long term that requires sufficient performance to have the means for future investment.
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Interviewer4:11
And in what you have, are you a mission-driven company or not? Did you find it necessary to proclaim it, or do you consider...?
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Jean-Christophe Machet4:18
We have written the company's mission: to be the reference for our clients of a sustainable and omnichannel supply chain.
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Interviewer4:27
What does that mean? Greening your activity. You want to reduce energy consumption by 7% per year across the group. You have many actions for that. What concrete types of actions?
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Jean-Christophe Machet4:39
Three types of actions. First, we are committed to a sobriety plan in terms of energy consumption. We do eco-design of our warehouses. We have a subsidiary, Bati Logistique, that builds warehouses. We invest a bit more so they are more eco-responsible. 100% of our sites built since 2012 are LEED and HQE certified, meaning we consume 20 to 50% less energy than a standard warehouse on the market. Second, we invest in green energy production equipment. We install solar panels. We will invest in 5 countries on 11 sites with solar panels to produce green energy or to produce hydrogen, as we just did by investing in equipment to transform electricity into hydrogen in Madrid, Spain, to fill our forklifts and also our vehicles for deliveries. And third, this environmental impact is found in our ability to organize supply chains for our clients, to combine and coordinate flows so that, as we said before, vehicles are better filled, arrive at destinations near cities, and then are delivered in cities in a more eco-responsible and socially responsible way.
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Interviewer6:13
You were telling us just before this interview that in addition to all these actions, we also need to educate the consumer. We won't always be able to deliver to their home. This management of the last kilometer, almost the last meters, what should be done to improve logistics on these last meters?
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Jean-Christophe Machet6:29
At FM Logistic, we strongly believe in mutualization, which will allow that 80% of orders could probably arrive at a point on the consumer's life path. So for 20% of orders, people with mobility issues or health problems, or large packages like refrigerators, it's good to deliver at home. For the others, we believe it's relevant to have neighborhood platforms close to the consumer, so that the consumer can have deliveries from large retailers or their local shop. When they come home at 8 PM or 7 PM, shops are closed, they go through this neighborhood platform that we call a 'City Corner', and they come to pick up a product from the local grocery or an order that goes further. They take everything at the same time, and they do the last 100 meters that they would do anyway to go home. By doing this, we manage to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 40%. In the same way, we need to offer the consumer choices: they can choose to be delivered in two hours, which has a high environmental impact because it requires dedicated means, so not optimized, or we can offer delivery in 12 hours or two days, and then we divide energy consumption and CO2 emissions by two. That's what we need to achieve now with an omnichannel supply chain that is maturing, to offer consumers these options. It's important that the consumer also has a role to play.
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Interviewer8:23
Thank you very much. Thank you, Jean-Christophe Machet, president of FM Logistic. Thank you for coming to see us on 60 Minutes.