Daher: a success story, contrary to the trend

After thirty-five years as a service company specialising in maritime transport and logistics, Daher became a manufacturer in 1998 despite the fact that at that time, the overriding trend was the creation of ‘fabless’ companies (ones which outsourced their manufacturing). Daher, however, had already weighed up the risks of being just a service provider based on episodes in its past when it had encountered difficulties in the back-tracking cycles of various sectors of activity. By developing its own industrial activity and simultaneously continuing as a service provider, it became less dependent on others and therefore reduced its vulnerability. At the same time‚ Daher was inspired by major groups and adopted a governance approach to separate its family holding companies from its operational holding companies. It was therefore able to open up its capital and responded quickly in benefitting from the first investment of the French government’s Strategic Investment Fund (Fonds stratégique d’investissement) in 2009. Daher made its own path and took directions which were counter to those taken by other companies at that time. In so doing, it invested substantial amounts of money in the construction of a new factory in Nantes and in the modernisation of its thirteen factories in France and abroad during an economic crisis. It tripled its turnover in five years, and is continuing to expand internationally.