RADDA IN CHIANTI (Siena, Italy) – Céline, the French brand leader in the leather goods industry with over 120 stores in the world, doubles its presence in Tuscany and finds his second home in Radda in Chianti, in the province of Siena, with an agreement with Regione Toscana which will bring new opportunities for future development, training and research and innovation projects on themes of Industry 4.0.
The agreement has been signed today in Radda in Chianti, by the Board of Directors of the Company and by the Councillor for Productive Activities, Stefano Ciuoffo. The new atelier started production a month ago with 30 employees, mostly young people who were administered a six weeks intensive training course.
‘This is one of the many results that have been achieved also thanks to the actions of Regione Toscana. Starting 2010, the Regional Authority has equipped itself with an internal structure (Invest in Tuscany) aimed at attracting investments from abroad, help entrepreneurs who wish to invest in Tuscany or expand pre-existing businesses’, says the President of Tuscany Enrico Rossi.
Radda in Chianti is the second Tuscan home of the French satellite brand of the LVMH group, since Céline has been producing for several years now in Strada in Chianti, in the province of Florence. Here Céline has a high craftsmanship atelier, with about 250 people, from Research and Development to model design, development of prototypes, production management, quality control and goods shipment, for a total of 800 workers involved directly and indirectly along the entire supply chain.
Since 2015 the choice to strengthen its ‘Made in Italy’ has led the Company to seek a new and additional production area in Tuscany, Veneto, Lombardia or Emilia Romagna, and the choice has eventually fallen upon Radda in Chianti. The town is just about 20 km from Greve, where the pre-existing production site once belonging to a furniture manufacturer will be reused temporarily while waiting for the new factory to be completed, some hundred meters afar in the same lot. Completion of the new production site is expected by the end of March 2019; the new factory will be built on the foundations of a demolished building, keeping the same volume as the latter and therefore without further use of land and particular attention also to landscape and energy sustainability.
‘This important development of our business falls into a positive phase of the evolution of Céline brand’, says President Séverine Merle. ‘We have chosen Tuscany precisely for its know-how and the high levels of craftsmanship and professionalism of the people that we can employ here’.
The final facility will cover a total of 5,200 square meters, of which four thousand dedicated to production and as Céline Production’s CEO Pierre Yves Foucher announced, will employ another 250 people, for a total of 500 employees.
Leather goods are one of the flywheels of the economic and export systems of Tuscany. The increased presence of Céline will for sure help to enhance the skills and mastery that Regione Toscana intends to support both through training activities and improving the qualification and traceability of the production chain.
‘We are proud of having played the role of facilitators in this operation and of being here today, which is a great satisfaction to us’, said the mayor of Radda in Chianti, Pier Paolo Mugnaini. ‘The meeting of our community with this big industrial group and with a leading brand such as Céline, the opportunity for further, significant development of our local economy and for regenerating an industrial area with a project that takes into account and respects the characteristics of our territory, all this is an asset to us, especially in this time when we are still under the effects of the financial crisis, a true asset to develop and preserve over time’.