'It's been amazing' Duralex glass-makers 'on a cloud' as French public save factory

Drop a Duralex glass and it will most likely bounce, not break. The French company has itself tumbled several times in the past two decades and always bounced back - but never quite as spectacularly as when, earlier this month, it asked the public for money.

- Kim Willsher

Duralex's glassware evokes nostalgia and pride in France

An appeal for €5m (£4.4m) of emergency funding to secure the immediate future of the glassworks took just five hours and 40 minutes to reach its target. Within 48 hours, the total amount pledged had topped €19m.

François Marciano, 59, the director general of Duralex, said the response had astonished everyone at the company. “We thought it would take five or six weeks to raise the €5m. When it reached nearly €20m we had to say stop, enough,” he said. As a staff cooperative, €5m is the maximum Duralex can accept in public investment.

Mention Duralex to many French people and they will be transported back to childhood and a school canteen. The brand evokes a mix of nostalgia and pride and is a symbol of French industrial savoir faire.

“We're like Proust’s madeleines,” Marciano said. “The French people want to save us. They are fed up with factories closing and the country’s industries declining.”