For Astreïa, I assemble the mill and liaise with suppliers. I update our plans when parts need to be modified, or when certain options need to be studied.
The hands of our mill
I monitor the receipt of goods and the payment of invoices to suppliers.
My job is to ensure product quality.
Its history at Astréïa
My story with Astreïa began with a meeting, even before it existed. That meeting was with Philippe, whom I met at a recruitment interview. I was applying for a job at Sunilux. So my first job with Sunilux was as an aluminium joinery estimator. After 2 or 3 years, Philippe asked me to join the Astreïa adventure. I then met Jean-Marie, who also put his trust in me. I was seduced by the beauty (let’s not mince words) of Jean-Marie’s project, which was not without resonance with Philippe’s own.
A passion for music
Music has always been my passion, ever since a nursery school teacher described me as a ‘music lover’, arousing my parents’ curiosity about a word they didn’t know.
The tightrope walker
What matters most today are my 5 children, 3 of whom live with me. So it’s a bit of a balancing act, managing to keep all these little people on the move, including myself, without any of them being absorbed into the family maelstrom.
So it’s values of respect for the individuality of each person that I try to bring to life with my children, and that’s what I felt when I first met Philippe. These values are combined with ethics, truthfulness, compassion, gentleness, but also a certain kind of uprightness, sprinkled with a good dose of flexibility.
It’s often a balancing act to hold them together. I’m not looking for harmony, which would imply a form of plenitude that’s a little static, but a balance, never stable, but one that allows movement, life.
An obvious choice
I was faced with an obvious choice: to follow these two men who placed the human being at the centre of human activities. The company is one of them, and what I’m writing may seem redundant, but I insist, because it’s quite rare.
I’m talking about a pivotal moment in my life, when I had the chance to combine the ideals of my youth, concerned as I was about the environmental constraints that I thought were going to shake up relations between people on the planet, with my responsibilities as a father at work every day.
Giving our palates and those of our children a taste
My ideals were rooted in the land, and I was going to be able to work modestly but concretely, by taking part in an alternative proposal, which could pay a fair price to the farmer, give the baker the opportunity to work with a noble material, and give taste to our palates and those of our children.
