FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
Just six years after the opening of its Nyon plant in 2009, Hublot has doubled the surface area of the production facilities with a second manufacturing building
IN A BID TO keep pace with continuous expansion and pursue the vertical integration of its production capacity, Hublot initiated the construction of a second large building back in 2014. The project was officially launched on 3 March, by Jean-Claude Biver, chairman of Hublot and president of the LVMH Group Watch Division, together with Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe.
A year later, the new building was fully erected and equipped, and has since doubled the surface area of the production facilities. This extension is highly symbolic for the brand ̶ it bears witness to its expansion and continuous success. The Nyon architectural firm Coreta has added 8,000sqm of surface, allowing Hublot to carry out the installation of100 workstations over the next five years. This will give the company a workforce of over 400 people in Switzerland. The project represents an investment of 20 million Swiss Francs for the company.
Courtesy of Hublot, we had the opportunity to tour the new facilities earlier this year prior to Baselworld 2018. This new unit, which sits alongside the first building, is mainly dedicated to producing components for manufacture movements and producing watch cases. During our tour, we were invited to discover the micro-mechanics workshops, the CNC machines, the decoration, electroplating, general mechanical and cleaning workshops, all duly installed, alongside the after-sales service and part of the administrative departments.
FROM TOP
Lapo Elkann scores a “big bang”; Pele and Lapo Elkann; Lapo Elkann, Jean-Claude Biver, Bar Refaeli, Esteban Gutierrez, Pele, Ricardo Guadalupe and Daniel Rossellat
Connecting the two buildings is an alfresco bridge inspired by those found on Formula 1 Grand Prix tracks around the world. Upon crossing the bridge, we carried on with the second part of the tour at the “Hublot 1” manufacture. The existing building has been reorganised so that all of the ground floor is occupied by the Innovations, Research & Development department, whose activity is mainly focused on new materials and very complicated movements. We were given the opportunity to explore first-hand the creation of Hublot’s renowned Magic Gold, the scratchproof gold patented by Hublot and the EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne).
This was followed by a visit to the assembly workshops, with a special insight into the UNICO workshop where the manufacture chronograph movement is designed and assembled, as well as the very silent Grandes Complications workshop, in which only the minute repeaters are allowed to resonate. The reorganisation of the first building has allowed the ASF (Provision Assembly), T1 (Movement Assembly), T2/ T3 (Watch Head and Watch Assembly) departments and Complications Workshop to redeploy and expand to follow Hublot’s growth. Finally, the production unit in Gland, which is mainly focused on producing cases and carbon fibre components, as well as the setting unit joined the main site in Nyon.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Hublot has installed two “Private One” charging terminals that can be used to charge an electric car or scooter in an optimal manner. The company will also have photovoltaic solar panels as a renewable source of electricity. Particular attention has been paid to the efficiency and the power performance of the technical installations. In terms of the energy design, the performance of the building’s envelope is 20% higher than that required by the SIA 380/1 standard (the Swiss Engineers and Architects Society).
STAR-STUDDED OPENING
A little over a year after the first ground was broken, Biver and Guadalupe inaugurated Hublot’s second large manufacturing building, in the company of three hundred guests from around the world including brand ambassadors, VIP guests, friends of the brand and journalists. Among them were Bar Refaeli, Lapo Elkann and Pelé, all ambassadors of Hublot.
They took part in the ceremony to handover the keys from the existing building to the new building. The ceremony kicked off with Pelé, followed by a “goal” by Michel Pont, creating an enormous “Big Bang”. This was accompanied by the spectacular arrival of Bar Refaeli crossing between buildings H1 and H2 via a Formula 1-style walkway, as found on Grand Prix tracks around the world, which offers direct access between the two buildings.
In conjunction with the grand opening was also the launch of a campaign across Hublot’s 73 boutiques around the world to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the iconic Big Bang collection.