The Elcimaï Group has delivered "L’Abeille 2," a facility dedicated to the production, packaging, and storage of beverages, to the LSDH Group.
The Elcimaï Group has just handed over its new industrial facility in Mazières-en-Mauges, near Cholet (49), to the LSDH Group, a manufacturer of still and carbonated beverages. Built on a 15-hectare site, the L’Abeille 2 production plant covers an area of 56,000 m² and features an automated high-rack warehouse capable of storing 40,000 pallets. From layout design to construction, including process integration, Elcimaï’s multidisciplinary teams worked in perfect synergy to successfully complete this exceptional project.
The Elcimaï Group delivers L’Abeille 2 to the LSDH Group !
Based in Cholet since 1970 with its L’Abeille factory, LSDH was no longer able to physically expand its soft drink and syrup production facility at that location. To increase its capacity and centralize its regional dairy production, the manufacturer had to build a new facility and turned to the Elcimaï Group, one of France’s leading industrial and logistics real estate firms.
LSDH entrusted Elcimaï with designing a production, packaging, and storage facility tailored to its specific needs on a 15-hectare vacant lot subject to certain urban planning constraints. The goal was to increase the number of production lines from 5 to 11 over three years, enabling each to reach an average output of 15,000 bottles per hour, for a total of 400 million bottles per year.
Elcimaï at the heart of this new construction !
“The manufacturer chose Elcimaï because of our ability to provide comprehensive and relevant proposals,” explains Rémi Hardiviller, project engineer at Elcimaï Ingénierie. “We have all the necessary expertise in-house for a project of this scale, which is the sum of a multitude of specific projects, whether in architecture, logistics, or any field related to the environment.”
The site boasts impressive energy efficiency ; in fact, a heat recovery system has been installed for industrial cooling as well as for compressed air, generating 1,500 kW of electricity to fully heat the plant.
The L’Abeille 2 site, designed and built by Elcimaï’s teams, covers a floor area of 56,000 m² and includes, in particular :
- flexible production spaces, largely lit by natural light,
- a tank farm with a total capacity of 7,000 m³,
- a deep-freeze chamber (-18 °C) capable of holding 312 pallets,
- a positive-temperature cold room (2 °C) capable of holding 520 pallets,
- filling and packaging workshops (11 lines) with upstream storage areas,
- a high-bay warehouse (40 m), equipped with 8 triple-depth automated stacker cranes serving a cantilever racking system, offering a storage capacity of 40,000 pallets (equivalent to a volume of 240,000 m³),
- a shipping hall with material handling processes and 13 loading docks,
- service buildings (administration, guard post, and driver housing),
- laboratories,
- a steam boiler room comprising two 12-ton-per-hour boilers (19.8 MW capacity),
- an NH3 refrigeration machine room with 8 air-cooled compressors (2,500 kW capacity),
- a CO₂ refrigeration system for deep-freezing applications,
- a water treatment plant, including a pumping and purification station for process water,
- a wastewater pretreatment plant (960 m³ of treated effluent per day),
- road and utility networks, parking lots, as well as outdoor maneuvering and storage areas.
“The logistics processes were designed to fit the industrial layout, with highly automated flows and operations,” explains Hervé Marcastel, sales director at Elcimaï Ingénierie. “The automated storage and retrieval system—featuring cantilever racks and AGVs—that sets the site apart was designed from the outset to align with all upstream and downstream flows and was chosen primarily for infrastructure cost reasons.”
In terms of environmental engineering, the site was specifically designed to be water- and energy-efficient.
For example, water consumption for cleaning will drop from 1.2 liters per collar produced to 0.8 liters, and heat recovered from the processes will be used to heat the administrative buildings.
“This project is undoubtedly one of Elcimaï’s flagship projects of the past five years,” says Axel Denier, CEO of the Elcimaï Group. “In collaboration with L’Abeille and LSDH, we have deployed all of our skills and assets—whether technical, environmental, or human—to design and build this magnificent plant. The building’s architecture was designed to maximize natural light, particularly for employee comfort and to reduce energy consumption related to lighting. It is the culmination of two years of design and nearly three years of construction ! The teams are proud to have achieved this goal and to deliver a high-performance industrial facility to our client, who is now focusing on installing their production lines. This is a project people will still be talking about in 20 years !
- Media coverage :
L’Abeille moves into its XXL factory in Cholet / Les Echos
The LSDH Group unveils L’Abeille 2, its new 56,000 m² beverage production, packaging, and storage plant near Cholet / Agro Média