André Ertzscheid took over Charles Bonnet & Fils in December 2022. Despite the economic situation, he is counting on an increase in turnover in 2024

Specializing in the machining of wood drill bits (for drilling frames, etc.), Bonnet & Fils, a small company almost a century old (€1.80 million in turnover, 14 employees) has survived the century and successive crises. It now processes 300 tons of steel per year, the equivalent of 300,000 wood drill bits produced: “we are the last French manufacturer”, says its buyer André Ertzscheid.

In December 2022, after a good year in 2021 (€2.5 million in turnover), the family has chosen to pass on the business rather than inherit. With the support of Bpifrance, which has invested in the capital, the third generation at the head of Bonnet & Fils is turning a page in its history and handing over the reins to André Ertzscheid.

Having worked in plastics, this engineer by training is convinced of this. Despite recent difficulties, the rise in the price of energy and steel (the purchase price had tripled between June 2020 and March 2022, and was passed on to prices, Editor's note), and those to come, Bonnet & Fils is approaching the pitfall of the construction market with clear optimism: “Wood is the material of the
future. We are building less and less but more and more in wood”, estimates the manager who hopes to develop his turnover by 10% in 2024 “according to the trends reported by our distributor customers”. A company focused on its core business for 100 years

Registered in the trade register in 1925, Charles Bonnet & Fils has stayed its course without deviating from it. Focused on its core business, it abandoned the forging of its drill bits in favor of their machining and developed over time a very minor activity of trading in drill bits for concrete, metal, aluminum and PVC. The company has opened up to export (60% of its turnover in 2021), on the German, Austrian and Belgian markets.

In the immediate future, the development and modernization of Bonnet & Fils’ production tool will go through a three-year investment plan. André Ertzscheid has just submitted it to his banking partners. As for the production of a “green”; wick, twisted and no longer machined, it is under consideration (with IREPA Laser in Illkirch) and will require several years of development, warns André Ertzscheid.