Industry

From thin paper to plastic films and electricity storage

From a starting point of fine paper, our historic line of business, in 1983, the Bolloré Group began developing business in the production of ultra-fine plastic films for condensers and shrink film for top packaging. The Group went international in 1984 with the creation of the Bolmet subsidiary in the United States, and is now the world No. 1 manufacturer of plastic film for condensers. Riding on this experience, teams then developed an electric battery with a technology resistant to high temperatures – Lithium Metal Polymer (LMP®) – and supercapacitator technology around which the “electricity storage” division is built: Blue Solutions, listed on the stock market since the end of 2013.

The roll-out of a wide range of applications

To demonstrate the validity and performance of this battery, we created a range of all-electric vehicles: cars, shuttles, buses (for Paris in particular), and trams. In 2011, we won a call for tenders from the city of Paris to create Autolib’, the world’s first car-sharing service with fully electric vehicles. We deployed the model in the cities of Lyon and Bordeaux, then exported it to Turin and Indianapolis, soon to be followed by Singapore, London and Los Angeles. Our IER and Polyconseil subsidiaries have played a key role in the success of car-sharing, in particular by designing and developing charging terminals and IT services that enable us to propose a fully integrated product offering. But the story does not end there, as today we are also developing solutions in electric stationary storage (on-grid/off-grid solutions).