1949
ACOME manufactures the first PVC-insulated cables for the automotive industry
Key technologies
Innovating for a connected world
As a technology company, ACOME has made innovation a lever of its growth model. The challenge lies in Driving innovation at the same pace as a fastchanging market.
Technological champion of the French cable industry
With industrial sites on four continents, ACOME is a world-class industrial company that puts industrial performance and innovation first to ensure its long-term sustainability.
The Group offers its customers high-tech cabling based on French R&D know-how and the Group’s industrial excellence. Each industrial site applies the same standards of excellence and quality on all four continents. This technological and industrial expertise forms a key factor for succeeding in a highly competitive international market.
Production model modernisation and operational excellence at all sites lie at the heart of the Group's industrial policy. This policy should enable ACOME to strengthen its growth momentum, backed by a €70 million investment programme between 2017 and 2020. This budget is mainly dedicated to increasing industrial production capacity, transforming the industrial management system, laying the foundations for plant 4.0, and innovation.
Chiffres clés
150
R&D experts
2
R&D centres
France, China
Key dates
1952
Design of telephone cables with plastic insulating sheaths. These have several colours alternating helically.
1960
Launch of interference suppression cables to meet ORTF requirement: in just a few months, ACOME supplies 40% of the French car fleet.
1976
An industry pioneer, ACOME is the first cable manufacturer to master the electro-physical cross-linking of polymers.
1981
Industrial diversification and manufacture of high-strength PEX (cross-linked polyethylene) pipes for heating and domestic hot water distribution in buildings. Design of the first low temperature hydraulic underfloor heating and cooling system: Thermacome.
1993
ACOME is the first industrial company to manufacture zero-halogen cables for the automotive industry.
2000
Integration of optical fibre technology into the manufacture of optical fibre cables.
2005
The first industrial group to present a very thin hydraulic underfloor heating system without concrete screed.
2008
New patented concept of permanently accessible optical cables (PACe). The very design of these cables allows installers to reroute optical fibres to any location to meet changing subscriber connection requirements.
2010
Design of optical cabling solutions (pre-connected riser cables) and self-regulating tracer cable solutions (Trassacome) to prevent any risk of a pipe bursting due to freezing and to maintain domestic hot water networks at a given temperature.
2011
Design of FTTH boxes and smart solutions (optical terminal sockets, etc.).
2012
Industrialisation of copper pair cables using recycled PE (sheathing) to allow our customers to reduce their environmental footprint.
2013
Industrialisation of high-capacity optical cables - with up to 864 optical fibres - departing from the central office for FTTH deployment over the "last mile".
2014
Design of an eco-designed high-voltage automotive cable with light electromagnetic protection (French: CHAPEL), the most flexible and lightest armoured power cable on the market to meet the challenge of reducing vehicle weight. It is eco-designed and designed for hybrid and electric vehicles (HEVs).
2015
With the acquisition of Idea Optical, a company specialising in the design and manufacture of optical patch equipment, ACOME is strengthening the Group's expertise in optical connectivity products.
2016
The new materials designed by ACOME address the challenges of vehicle light-weighting with a reduction in weight of 60%. "Skinny wires" are the lightest wires on the market.
2017
With its dual expertise in the automotive and Telecom industries, ACOME is meeting the challenges of smart mobility and presenting the first prototypes from the High Speed Data range providing speeds from 100Mbits/s to 1Gbit/s for the automotive industry.
2018
ACOME is developing smart cable reels based on digital technologies such as GPS and the LoRa long-range telecommunications network.
2019
With 0% silicone, the "e-layer" technology (multilayer), designed and patented by ACOME, meets the highest technical requirements for new energy vehicles (NEV).
Multidisciplinary technological expertise
ACOME has developed a wide range of knowledge and know-how in the fields of materials chemistry, metallurgy (wire drawing), glass fibre drawing (fibre optics), assembly of metal conductors and optical fibres (cabling) and plastics processing (sheathing).
Within the Group's R&D centre of excellence, the "Process, Product & System Simulation" department studies the rheological properties of polymers applied to extrusion, cooling systems and electron beam irradiation processes (electro-physical cross-linking: E-beam) or electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).
The Group's research centre of excellence is a value chain asset for the Group's competitiveness”
Aurélien Bergonzo, Director of Research, Innovation & Technology
Aurélien Bergonzo, Director of Research, Innovation & Technology
Aurélien
Bergonzo
-
Director of Research, Innovation, Technology and Outlook
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ACOME Group
New materials and compounds
ACOME is one of the few industrial companies to make its own compounds (polymer blends) for use in wire insulation production, cable sheathing and tube manufacture: the mixing workshop supplies the compounds to all the Group's plants. Mastering the formulation of these insulating materials allows the Group to meet the highest technological requirements.
The Materials Division focuses its work on improving the processability of the conductive materials (copper, aluminium and alloys) used in the composition of wires and cables for buildings, Telecom infrastructure and motor vehicles.
ACOME is pursuing research and development in fibre optics, of which it is now the third largest European manufacturer. At the heart of the Telecom and IT infrastructures of tomorrow, fibre optics will offer capacities well beyond those of today, with theoretical speeds up to several hundred Gbit/s.
Our fire testing and qualification laboratory is in-house and Cofrac-accredited
With more than 2000 products concerned, the implementation of the Construction Products Regulation (CPR) was an important topic for ACOME. All measurements of propagation, heat release, smoke opacity, corrosivity and toxicity were carried out in its fire test laboratory.
The fire testing laboratory is housed at the Mortain industrial site in France, with staff certified to carry out fire performance tests specific to the electrical field. The laboratory is accredited by Cofrac (Cofrac accreditation: testing laboratory - ISO CEI 17025 2017 version - Accreditation n°1-1114 -See www.cofrac.fr for scope), which confers official status to the tests carried out there. It is one of the first laboratories in France to have its accreditation renewed according to the new version of the 17025 standard (applicable since 1 January 2019).
New innovative materials with increasingly high fire resistance performance have also been developed in line with the new criteria introduced by the CPR. ACOME is thus able to supply cables for all new CPR Euroclasses and remains ahead of the regulations curve in these markets.