Manufacture
AndrewD's insightful visit to Chopard's Fleurier Ebauches workshops offers a rare glimpse into the brand's strategic move towards greater vertical integration and in-house movement production. This report is crucial for understanding Chopard's commitment to elevating its watchmaking capabilities beyond the L.U.C range, ensuring long-term independence and quality across its broader collections.
There was still some construction going on around the manufacture when I visited in October last year, but inside is a hive of activity ...
I was fortunate enough to get a glimpse inside Fleurier Ebauches. The building itself is state of the art with environmental engineering to maintain optimum light and temperature conditions for the workers inside, regardless of outside conditions.
Materials are lapped to provide perfect thickness for further milling ...
Automated CNC machines produce components which are further cleaned and finished.
A range of components are produced ...
While more of the basic milling is done on CNC machines, there is still plenty of hands-on finishing, including the application of perlage.
Annual production in 2012 was around 5000 movements and Chopard plan to increase this over the next 3 years to reach approximately 15,000 movements in 2015.
Plenty of opportunity for expansion ...
In the future we can expect even higher quality movements in the entry level Chopard range which is very exciting.
The view of Fleurier Ebauches from the LUC Manufacture in Fleurier ...
Well, the question is the hope, as I thought Chopard made more watches per year, and I hope that they will still maintain this level of quality, even if the production is 3 times more important. Best, Nicolas.
I'd love to see them reduce the dependence on commodity movements... thanks for the report A
Hi Nico, Those production figures are solely for Fleurier Ebauches and do not include the LUC Manufacture in Fleurier or the Geneva Manufacture in Meyrin. And in fact what Fleurier Ebauches will allow is an increase in quality and a greater degree of independence from outside manufactures. Even so, I was impressed with the amount of hand finishing that was occurring here. You expect (and do) see that at the LUC Manufacture, but at a higher production facility I was pleasantly surprised. There wi
Thanks Aaron, That is definitely Chopard's business strategy and I am very impressed with it. They pay careful attention to all areas of their product range. Andrew
... I show you inside the L.U.Chopard Manufactures. You will be more than impressed. This is a company that really takes their watchmaking seriously. Andrew
SFWIBW points out that they have essentially nothing in the ladies range with anything but bog-standard ETA, and it's 90% quartz.... a area ripe for improvement! A
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