Since its origin, the logo created by André Labaronne had remained unchanged. On the occasion of the company’s anniversary, July 17, 2019, Labaronne-Citaf revealed a new logo.
Without drawing a line on the past, based on the experience and dynamics of the new management, this visual identity brings together the ingredients that make up the company’s DNA, while being firmly rooted in modernity!
For nearly 10 years, several managers succeeded each other. Under the governance of Jacques Cellier, Gérard Haricot and Michel Charton took over the management. In 2004, Denis Aubel bought the company and chaired it until June 2017, the year in which the company was placed in receivership. On July 6, 2017, Benoît Balandras and Thomas Sénéclauze, both employees of the company, bought out and reorganized Labaronne-Citaf.
The flexible tank market is expanding rapidly. Jacques is developing connections with the Middle East. But when he returns from a customer appointment, he gets a car accident from which he will not survive. An entrepreneur, Jacques Cellier, bought the company and renamed it Labaronne-Citaf, in tribute to the family history. He moved to the Leveau industrial area, in Vienna.
Thanks to Jacques Labaronne’s commercial fibre, the company began to expand internationally. Nevertheless, his father will not have time to take advantage of it. On June 16, 1974, André Labaronne died of his illness at the age of 51.
The company is slowly thriving. But André Labaronne is ill. His son Jacques, who was then 26 years old and already a director of the company since 1970, took over the management of the company.
Attracted by more favourable tax conditions (thanks to the Isère deputy Louis Mermaz), and always with the ambition to promote his product, André Labaronne set up his small business in Vienna. There are many forest fires in the area and the tanks meet the needs of the firefighters. The various modifications made to the company forced him to rename the company “Etablissements Labaronne”.
In close collaboration with his brother Georges, a winegrower, André Labaronne has developed his tank and marketed it to farmers in the region. But contracts are not enough for the company to grow and CITAF is in difficulty. Always looking for improvements, he is looking to optimize his patent for a self-supporting flexible tank. He submitted a new draft of an improved flexible tank – a model similar to the one used today.
The market is hard to create in France… André Labaronne leaves Paris for Touraine, where he can ensure family support. So he settled in Tours, which has become the new fiefdom of the Labaronne family. He moved also the CITAF company’s head office there and appointed Claude Touchon, his brother-in-law, to the company’s management.
60 years of excellence – the history of the company
Attached to his first inventions, André Labaronne remains convinced that his transport tanks meet a real need. Therefore, he decided to advance his concept, by taking inspiration from the improvements made to freestanding pools, to redesign a prototype.
