Last year, Raymond Nogael was promoted to President of MECATHERM. He shared the company’s strategy for development and sustainability, along with his perspective on the industry after 10 years with MECATHERM.
Catalina Mihu: After spending a full day visiting the Demo Center in Barembach, I saw many new developments. Significant changes have been made and many projects are in progress in several areas, and not necessarily focusing solely on launching new equipment. What are MECATHERM’s priorities today?
Raymond Nogael: Launching a new oven every year would not even be sustainable. Our latest oven, for example, the M-VT vertical oven, which we unveiled at iba 2023, took us almost three years to perfect. That’s the reason why new launches are desirable around trade shows with a three-year cycle, when they can be introduced. Furthermore, development is driven by market needs. This cycle also allows us to listen to and study the exact needs of the market and adapt our portfolio of innovations accordingly. Today, we are increasingly putting efforts and energy into improving existing equipment to give our customers the opportunity to upgrade their current production lines. Indeed, innovation also involves integrating new services or options to bring additional values in terms of product quality and performance or to enable our customers to make advances in sustainability.
Mihu: Your background is in the automotive industry, where a new car model is usually launched every year. How does this launch frequency compare to the baking industry, which is generally considered slower in its development?
Nogael: People do not buy a new car every year, though. And not many bakers would buy a new oven every year, either. We look at different developments throughout the year, in many areas, in addition to the equipment itself. For instance, as you saw today, we are looking at a lot of options for increased sustainability. The same is true for digitalization.
This is why we are not going to present new equipment at iba and then IBIE in Las Vegas, this year. We do have new technology, such as the new M-VT oven and the new M-RT molder, launched in 2023. This year, we are going to focus on showing how we can help our customers be more sustainable at these trade fairs, and what kind of solutions we can develop for them – either machines or services. Regarding innovations in favor of sustainability, we’ll show our customers many ways to optimize their energy efficiency and improve their waste management through their entire production line. Regarding services, we’ll share our new audit possibilities. For example, we’ve conducted our first energetic audit recently. Last but not least, we’ll introduce the latest updates done on our platform MyMecatherm. Connected services offer many benefits: it enables our customers monitoring their equipment or production lines with real time data as well as identifying what goes wrong or could go wrong for early check and preventive trouble shooting actions. On this portal, information available is customized for each customer and each department of the bakery is completely aligned and fully involved, so that they are able to customize improvements together with us.
Raymond Nogael
MECATHERM appointed Raymond Nogael as its new President in June, 2024, succeeding Olivier Sergent. He is responsible for pursuing MECATHERM’s development strategy, with a focus on innovation and sustainable development.
Nogael joined TMG (the parent company of MECATHERM, ABI and MaMaTa) in 2015 as a Marketing & Business Developement Vice-President and member of the Executive Committee.
He created and established MECATHERM ‘service’ subsidiaries in Atlanta and Toronto and integrated its sister company, ABI. In 2023, as he completed this assignment, Nogael took additional responsibilities with the management of sales and sustainable development for the entire TMG Group.
Mihu: What is MECATHERM’s approach to sustainability and innovation?
Nogael: I feel very committed about sustainability. It starts with underlining its necessity, to allow everyone to live well and within the limits of our planet. Company-wide, I want people to feel confident, to feel secure and to see that they can progress in the organization; and also know that we are compliant with all standards, not just from an ecological point of view. We have been doing great things for years already, and we have been significantly increasing our efforts for the past year, with Amandine’s support1. We want to be fully transparent and to allow our teams to take part in this sustainable journey. For instance, Amandine spent last year traveling to all our sites, to explain what sustainability means to us and make our approach more concrete for everyone; and this year, she’s going to follow up with a second round to show everyone what we have implemented, what our current status is and how they can contribute. It will take time, but I’m convinced that communication is key to raise awareness and bring teams together around a common project. I strongly believe that collaboration is the key to converting ideas into successful and concrete sustainable innovations. This is why part of our sustainable strategy also relies on acting in cooperation with key players from the entire value chain and activating progress where it can best support our customers’ needs.
I don’t want to be a leader; everybody can lead in some area. We are a leading company, surely, but being the reference is more meaningful, because that is based on trust, on building relationships and a name. Leading in volume sales alone does not necessarily imply this.”
Raymond Nogael, President, MECATHERM
Reducing the environment’s impact is one of our strategic pillars in our sustainability approach, alongside social responsibility. For instance, making efforts to provide good working conditions for our employees for their daily fulfillment is crucial. There are not many companies that have the ability, as we do, to build a full production line. Together with our subsidiaries, we have over 500 people, we are not a small company anymore, all of which contribute with different specializations. All talents are welcome to join our pool of experts. We are establishing a new organization where we encourage diversity – in nationalities, levels/areas of expertise, and genders – and we create opportunities that are tailored to each person.
Raymond Nogael, President, MECATHERM
‘Savoir-faire’, translated globally
Mihu: Your first role, when you joined MECATHERM 10 years ago, was in the area of Marketing and Business Development and, since last year, you have been pursuing that from a different role, as president of MECATHERM. What have been the main investments so far?
Nogael: We have invested significantly in equipment, to ensure that we have the right product portfolio to address each market. MECATHERM first became known as a baguette specialist worldwide, with sales mainly in Western Europe. The focus was on the French bread culture, with a team of only French people who were working in France, even though MECATHERM was selling technologies worldwide.
Then, the next step was to address new markets and capitalize on the baguette – new markets in terms of applications, such as soft breads, pastry and patisserie products. And now, we are able to support other applications, such as savory or plant-based products. It remains important that MECATHERM stays good in niche markets; this doesn’t mean we are going to compete with specialists in large-volume products. Instead, we aim to address specific product ranges that have very high-end value products. This is where we want to be different in the market, with unique solutions – like our oven for fragile, sensitive, added value goods, where we can combine a lot of different technologies.
Mihu: Can you tell us a little bit more regarding the evolution of your geographical expansion?
Nogael: Once our product portfolio was complete and our expertise solid and consolidated, we looked at the geographical markets themselves. We knew that Western Europe would have a significantly lower capacity in the future, because there was a lot of investment here in 2015-2017. Besides, Europe’s population is not growing.
Next, once we understood that Western Europe would be less active, we made strong efforts in Eastern Europe. We recruited people and we now have a team in Poland, for example, where it’s a big market for bread, but not necessarily baguettes. Now, a consistent part of our activity is in Eastern Europe.
We also entered the US and Canadian markets, with a big team. We opened a subsidiary in the US (in Atlanta) and in Canada, where we established an office in Toronto, just one year after the acquisition of ABI by our holding company TMG. North America now represents a considerable market share of our business.
Mihu: You oversaw the North American expansion. What did it involve?
Nogael: I went to Canada and stayed there to ensure the transition and the implementation of our strategy. Now, we have become a French American company, because we are both in the US and in Canada, with a local team of 120 people of more than 25 different nationalities. We are becoming more international, with solutions for a wide range of applications and a global footprint. This is the foundation for our next steps.
Mihu: How are the dynamics in the American and European markets at the moment?
Nogael: European markets are quieter these days – although we do sell lines here, in Europe, it is mostly the big bakeries that have the capacity to invest. It’s not the same in the US, where even smaller companies are currently investing in several lines, and even in new plants, to step up from semi-industrial to fully industrial operations.
Focus on product quality, production efficiency and sustainability
Mihu: What are the next steps?
Nogael: Thanks to the successful expansion in North America, we are now in a position where we can invest in the future, in sustainability and digitization. We can now continue to ‘push the button’ on sustainability, and this is what we are doing right now, with the goal of being at the same time fully customer-oriented. This is why we transformed our Demo Center in Barembach, from a facility where we could show our new machines and standalone pieces of equipment, to a testing hub that now holds a complete, adjustable production line for full-scale product testing2. The building now has a new, sustainability-focused design and expanded utilization. It’s easy to say you are customer-oriented, but there is a difference between saying it and achieving it. Taking care of a customer is not enough to make a company customer oriented, it goes beyond that. For us, it means that each time we think about something, we need to think about the customer and their point of view. You shouldn’t say ‘I think…’ – you should say ‘The customer told me’. And you shouldn’t say ‘We need to do this’; it should be ‘The customer asked us to do this’. It’s a different philosophy.
In this way, we ask our customers questions and define their main three challenges – product quality, production efficiency and sustainability. The question is: what does it mean for the bakery? When looking at industrial performance, there are several potential challenges. It can, for instance, be about avoiding breakdowns, and this is possible thanks to preventive and predictive maintenance. It enables bakeries to make better products with less energy. We have invested in our equipment development to improve baking results with lower energy consumption. We’ve also taken into account that our customers will have some difficulty finding labor, and we aimed to make their life easier in terms of monitoring, setting, etc. Digitalization helps here, too: having a platform where a customer can access easily the information he needs will also help us to better help them determine their needs. This is the
MyMecatherm platform.
MECATHERM’s North American team and ABI LTD visited the revamped Demo Center in France, on the company’s 60th anniversary.
Mihu: How are MECATHERM’s strategies adapted to the bakers’ priorities in Europe and North America? Do the offices have different policies?
Nogael: The strategy is to be local. The foundations are shared. I always say, think centrally and adapt locally. Our teams have full autonomy to adjust to the North American market: they know the culture and know what to do. They adjust according to the customer’s expectations, because they don’t receive the same kinds of demands.
Americans are pragmatic and quick to cooperate to find the right solution for them. Once they learn that you provide excellent services, they are very loyal. This is why we established service subsidiaries there. It’s also important to transfer the knowledge within the teams. And we are sending people from France to the North American offices for two-three years, to acquire this local expertise.
Mihu: For a different perspective, of what the bakers say, how do Europeans perceive MECATHERM compared to how the bakers in the US and Canada see the company, as an established French specialist entering a new market?
Nogael: That was an opportunity for us because we are well-known in Europe as crusty baguette experts, while in North America they didn’t know much about us. They were considering baguettes not as a mass-market product, but more as an ethnic product. And they saw we could help with authentic baguette production.
We have also invested significantly in being present on the market: we attend all key conventions such as ABA, BEMA, and ASB events, where we are partners or sponsors. It was needed, because we found that the difference between North America and Europe is that networking is important there; business is done outside of the factory.
Mihu: Last year, we met in Hamburg, for AIBI’s Congress. How are European events, by comparison?
Nogael: In North America, 1,000 bakers will come to a convention, which is four days long and includes meetings, workshops, and organized dinners. I would like to meet more bakers at the AIBI events in Europe, too.
In North America, we introduced ourselves as a French company, and as bakers first and then industrial manufacturers. We know the product. The renowned French ‘savoir-faire’ in the art of baking is part of our heritage. We know the bakery and we have bakers in our team. Then, we talk about our solutions. This was the real difference in our approach. I established the same strategy with ABI and changed the approach from technology to product and how the machine can bring higher-quality scoring to it. ABI makes the Katana Robotic Scoring System and the Eye-Q Quality control system. Their solutions are now included in the bigger lines we offer and are increasingly requested as bakers learn how they can benefit from them. We are now working on a new Katana Robotic Scoring machine, a modernized version that will be introduced in the near future.
In Europe, iba will be the first event where we attend under the new management. We want visitors to see that we have a customer-oriented vision and concentrate on sustainable innovations and solutions to make our customers’ lives easier, which doesn’t only mean new equipment. An updated oven, too, is a new technology; it doesn’t have to be an entirely new oven. For example, an iPhone 4 is not the same as an iPhone 15, because it’s just an upgraded model; the same goes for ovens. A lot has changed from one version to the next. This perspective takes a change of mindset, which does not happen overnight, especially in more traditional markets.
Raymond Nogael, President, MECATHERM
Mihu: The baking industry is sometimes seen as not as fast in advancements as other manufacturing fields. The comparison with the automotive industry comes to mind again. What management changes are you bringing, in this regard?
Nogael: We have been speeding things up, accelerating how we work while ensuring that all the topics are addressed with the customers. As a policy, we are very open to the customer and listen to their needs because, ultimately, they are the ones driving forward. We want to ensure that they have a very good service, so that they can do that. In automotive, services are fundamental now; 20-25 years ago, car manufacturers were not focusing on providing services, because everybody was going to the small garage.
I was part of that conversation, where automotive moved to integrate services much more, not only because it was so profitable, but it’s also to keep the loyalty of the customer. And so have we: what I brought is a significant change in services. When I joined MECATHERM, the service team had only about 20 people in services; now, we have 100 people globally. We offer various types of service contracts, including energy audits.
We are also accelerating our own manufacturing process. We can bring things from car production because some excellent tools and methods can be applied. We do this regularly, as we have more recently done with the new small factory we opened last year in France, which produces our handling systems. Here, we implemented a new production setup, similar to those found in the automotive industry – cell by cell. As a result, we shortened the time to build a cell by 50%. Where it was three weeks, now it’s one week and a half. We brought a lot of methodologies, from different sectors.
Past, present and future
Mihu: What plans do you have for this year?
Nogael: Aside from trade shows, we’ve recently had a Bakery Sustainability seminar together with Puratos here, in Barembach. We are planning to continue these type of seminars and to enrich the information provided. We will plan many more events in 2026.
Mihu: For a look back at MECATHERM’s development, the company celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2024. There are still festive signs in the lobby. How was this milestone marked?
Nogael: We celebrated this symbolic event internally. December is a period of training and collaborative work for most teams. We took this opportunity to gather for a festive time the French and American teams of MECATHERM, ABI and MaMaTa, our digitalization expert. Amongst many surprises, we prepared a video for everybody that was shared during the celebrations. It speaks to us as we advance internationally as an ambassador of French bakery excellence. Today, our equipment and lines are running in over 70 countries.
Mihu: I recognize people in the group photos that were included in the video. It shows a close team. Where does MECATHERM position itself, 60 years into the business?
Nogael: It was a proud moment, seeing our people in the pictures. This is what we want – our people to feel that they are part of the organization, and proud of it. I am taking time to ensure that people are working together well. Building a trust relationship with our customers starts in-house when we know we share the same vision. That is the power of a team. My philosophy is that, while no one has a magic crystal ball to predict the future, it is clear that we cannot do anything if we cannot work well together.
Our goal is to be the reference on the market. I don’t want to be a leader; everybody can lead in some area. We are a leading company, surely, but being the reference is more meaningful, because that is based on trust, on building relationships and a name. Leading in volume sales alone does not necessarily imply this.
We learned a lot along the way to where we are now. There is a sentence I always like to refer to, ‘I never lose. I either win or I learn.’ Nelson Mandela said this, and it is also my philosophy, which I share with all our people here, at MECATHERM: we never lose – we want to win, but, if we don’t win, we have to learn; we need to test new things, we need to experiment to innovate and to gain experience in order to improve. This leads us to continuously improve everything we do.
Mihu: I could see a shared vision while talking with several people throughout the day here, at the Demo Center. The same message came from different voices.
Nogael: That’s good to hear, and it’s important to know. Feedback is very helpful, to be able to deliver insights in a constructive manner. It works the same way with the customer: you need to be transparent about the entire work process. It helps speed things up and we already have customers who are taking notice and say that they prefer this kind of relationship. In this way, you are engaged in constructive cooperation. We can work like this everywhere in the world, of course, adapted to respect each culture.
Mihu: Thank you for inviting me to visit and see all the changes, the new projects and the work in progress!
2Ed: A tour of the new Center in Barembach will be presented in detail in the next issue of Baking+Biscuit International.
