Rapport de stage 3eme1

By Yuxuan He February 2024

‘an innovating company working for the sustainable future’

Introduction:
Imerys is a public French manufacturing company, the world’s leading supplier of
mineral-based specialty solutions for industry, and founded in 1880 by the joining of
multiple small companies. It specializes in the production and processing of industrial
minerals. Its main headquarters is situated in Paris. Imerys is also a part of the CAC Mid 60,
a stock market index used by Paris Bourse. This company operates in over 133 countries with
over 230 industrial sites, and sells its products in over 150 countries. It provides the
manufacturing and construction industries with crucial minerals and rocks, such as alumina,
graphite, etc. The current CEO (Chief Executive Officer) is Alessandro Dazza, replacing the
former (now President and Chairman of Board of Directors) Patrick Kron in february 17th,
2020.

History of the company:

Imerys was not founded by a single person, but by different companies merging
together. In 1880, the Rothschild family combined their own mining and metal interests with
the Spanish company Peñarroya. Over the next century, it became one of the biggest mine
extraction companies in the world. After operating alone, Peñarroya decided to branch out to
the Société Le Nickel (now known as Eramet) and Mokta (now known as Société Mokta El
Hadid). The three companies united together to create a new company, called Imetal. The
new company focused especially on industrial mineral processing, before changing its name
in 1999 to Imerys. The enterprise branches out more, through its products and services.

The organization operated everywhere across the globe, with bases in more than 133
different countries. Imerys extends to North and South American, European, Middle
Eastern, African, and Asian-Pacific countries. Its main headquarters are situated in Paris,
although other important headquarters are situated in different parts of the world, such as
Kifisia (Athens, Greece), Shanghai (China), Nagpur (India), Roswell (Georgia, USA), etc.

Imerys’s parisian headquarters are located on the Quai de Grenelle, nestled among
residential buildings. It has over 17 000 employees in 2021 and 30 000 clients who rely on
Imerys environment-friendly productions. The enterprise produce, process and sell minerals
and their own products, such as melted cement, alumina zirconia, brown corundum, etc. The
industrial materials they sell benefits the society and economy because their products are
used in building rockets, for example. They have about a revenue of 4.3 billion, which the
enterprise uses to promote sustainability, eco-friendly products and sites.

Involvement in ecofriendliness:

As a manufacturing company in the mining industry, Imerys seeks to emit less

carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from their mineral processings and such, and to produce
more eco-friendly products to reduce the harm on nature. Since 2017, Imerys has made a
roadmap in line with the Paris Agreement about climate change, and joined the Science
Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to ensure that their targets are based on scientific criteria. In
2018, they launched a program called SustainAgility, where they set new goals for a better
and healthier future. One of the goals is lowering their greenhouse gas emissions: they align
themselves with the 1.5°C trajectory for 2030. In 2022, Imerys reached their goals, reducing
their carbon dioxide emissions by 36% (validated by the SBTi). The EcoVadis certificate
allows companies to know their carbon footprint, and to set sustainable goals in the future.
In the same year, Imerys got a score of 63 out of 100, higher than the average score of 43.
Employees and employers have set new goals for 2030, more ambitious than ever to
challenge themselves. By 2030, they want to reduce their emissions by another 25%.

One of their alternatives and source of renewable energy is the use of solar panels. On
the Al Zayani Fused Mineral Company’s – part of Imerys – Hidd site in Bahrain, Imerys
signed a solar power purchase agreement with Yellow Door Energy, the leading sustainable
provider for businesses in the Middle East. Imerys bought enough solar panels to turn it into
a solar plant of 25 000 square meters on the site, the energy produced covering up 15% to
20% of the site’s energy consumption. This will bring significant cost savings, reduce carbon
emissions linked to Imerys operations by 4,800 tonnes per year once fully operational as
well as contribute to reducing the CO2 footprint of the white fused alumina produced in
Bahrain, which in turn will benefit to the sustainability roadmap of their international
customers.

The various departments:

In Imerys, I am observing the work of those in the communication and marketing
department. The communication and marketing department consists of a big team of people,
including my mentor, Elena Cozmescu. The communication team and marketing team do
have their differences, despite working together (along with the finance team). There are
different communication ways in the company: there is the external communication, and the
internal communication. The external part includes the communication with Imerys’s
clients, and the way of media a product should be presented (poster, stand, salon, etc.) In the
internal communication section, like Elena, it involves spreading new information to the
employees and employers of Imerys, whether they are in France or not. You’d write articles
onto the enterprise’s website for all salaried employees.

Communication is very important in the company. The team of workers are the one
who ensure to attract new clients and keep the clients they already have close. It promotes
Imerys’s values and importance in the industrial industry. They decide how a product should
be presented forward to attract customers, and organize events and stands in salons around
the world. As to best present their products, rules exist on the presentation of a poster or the
formatting. One of the elements with a lot of rules shocked me: it was the use of colors and
the formatting of the logo. There are various guidelines to respect, like the limits of colors to
be used, the space where the logo should be placed, etc.

Communication is also important in B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to

client). For example, as Imerys is a manufacturing company, it is crucial to communicate
with the mining sites like Glomel (in Brittany), or Dunkirk (North of France) for the market’s
demands and needs, the budget, etc. In a mining site, it is paramount to explain to the locals
or local authorities the use and importance of the production and mining. Many industrial
and manufacturing companies are viewed as polluting and greedy, but Imerys prompts the
welfare of the biodiversity and ensures that nature is well taken care of before and after the
use of some certain quarries.

The Director of RAC (refractories, abrasives and construction) communication states

that ‘the communications function at Imerys occupies a strategic position; its mission is to
inform Imerys' audiences: employees, customers, local stakeholders and the press, and to tell
the company's stories and successes around the world. The key challenges for the function
are to communicate on the company's missions, our products and also our innovations and
actions in terms of sustainable development.”

Communication partners closely with the finance, marketing and sales departments:
the salespeople talk with the clients to persuade them, and to build good relationships (many
clients who have a solid connection with the company are more willing to share confidential
information and data). The data collected from these clients are then sent to the sales
manager, who then relays the information to the market analyst. In the marketing
department, the market analyst estimates the demand and need of their clients, estimating
the number for the next three months, or the next five years, etc. Each analyst examines the
data from specific sections: steel, ceramics, etc.

Marketing does not only consist of market analysts, they also have other workers who
imagine and create new product ideas, according to the certain needs of the market. This is
helped by the sales and business analysts, who give them information about the competitors,
the pricing, etc.
 These three departments work closer together than I expected, their threads woven
together. They all need each other to thrive, and I never thought that the collaboration would
be this unitedly engaged. I just learned that each job have specific parts, for example: I
thought that the market analyst would analyse all the data given to them, but I never realized
that each have specific themes (steel, ceramics, etc) and that they have to go look for the
majority of the information on websites and reports themselves. Also, the fact that there are
so many departments in the company is just astonishing for me.

There is the CEO, Alessandro Dazza, with the Executive

Committee (also known as COMEX from the French version
‘comité exécutif’) and the Business Area underneath him. In
COMEX, there is the finance department, the HR department, the
legal department, the strategy department and the global
communication department.
The financial part (controlled by the CFO, or Chief Financial
Officer) manages the treasury, the salary, the budget for each
purchase, travel or project (events, stands, etc).
HR, or the Human Resources department, manages the recruiting
of new employees, their formation (if needed) and the mobility
(immigration of an employee).
In the legal section, lawyers are hired to represent the company in
external affairs but they are not part of the company itself; and the jurists negotiate based on
legal information and laws, also being part of the enterprise.

I came to Imerys to observe the communication and marketing department of RAC of

the Business area. They supervise the minings and extraction of minerals who are really
useful for the refractory (resistant to heat), abrasive (toughness and strength) and
construction (eg. cement) minerals. As I am particularly interested in the communication
and marketing area, I decided to come to Imerys for a week of discovery and observation in
this sector.