Living 100 years from our forces at work

Our history

100 years of forces at work

Sedis was born in 1946 on the initiative of Peugeot from the merger of hundred-year-old companies.

Its ambition: manufacture the best-performing chains, which it has been doing all along  its ten decades of existence.

One hundred years later, the Sedis adventure continues with tenacity and passion, and even faster than ever.

Our mission: adapting  technology and chain manufacturing to the latest industrial challenges, in France and worldwide.

• Sedis was the first chain manufacturer in the world to be certified ISO 9001, in 1989
• In 1994, Sedis acquired Ergé et Sebin, the mechanical chain for heavy-duty conveyor belts. Sedis consolidates its new strengths.
• Over the last 20 years, the Sedis Verte chain has become the benchmark in the area of escalators.
• Since 2010, Sedis has integrated an international dimension by joining the Murugappa Group, while keeping its production and know-how in France.

Up until 1990, Sedis also made bicycle chains, putting it in the limelight as a partner of the Tour de France!

SEDIS sponsored Louison Bobet in 1955

Three historic moments regarding chain performance:

LENGTHENED LIFETIME

Originally, SEDIS essentially focused on manufacturing chains for cars and bicycles. It was at the beginning of the fifties that it adapted the chromizing process, used in the aeronautical sector, to smaller chains. This revolution, still manufactured today under the DELTA® brand name, makes it possible to endow chains with greater resistance to wear. This contributed to making SEDIS bicycle chains the key element for victory, because they were used by the greatest cycling champions – including Louison Bobet who SEDIS sponsored in 1955 –  reaching their peak in  the early seventies when SEDIS equipped the bicycles of 10 out of 11 teams on the Tour de France!

This activity was then sold by SEDIS in 1987, but the DELTA® process continued to evolve allowing it to be used on  larger chains, enabling SEDIS to propose an extensive range of chains with extremely high-performance mechanical characteristics.

MAINTENANCE-FREE CHAINS

As early as the nineteen sixties, Sedis started to diversify towards products used for handling purposes. Acknowledged for its capacity to innovate, it is the ideal partner for solving problems. It was thus in 1991 that, further to a fire that broke out owing to the overheating of the lubrication on an escalator, the London Underground contacted SEDIS asking it to develop a lubrication-free chain. The patent was filed in 1993 under the name SEDIS VIE. This ecological chain, which includes a self-lubricating composite bushing, is still used today under the name CHAINES VERTES® and equips the Metro systems in London, Paris, Hong Kong, Cairo, Mexico City and many other cities besides. This technology was then extended to other sectors of activity faced with recurring lubrication problems. The savings generated by the reduction in maintenance operations make it possible to generate significant gains in productivity.

TECHNOLOGY SUBSTITUTION

In 2011, SEDIS collaborated with a builder of drilling vessels on a project to replace cables with chains. Cables are usually employed on the swell compensator systems used to stabilize these boats. These cables pose problems linked in particular to the fact they have a certain degree of elasticity, they need to be greased and require the use of very large diameter pulleys.

The SEDIS Research and Development team has designed and developed two original Delta Verte® chains making it possible to overcome the drawbacks of cables and provide a particularly appropriate solution for the lubrication problem, which is extremely difficult to deal with on-site. These Verte® chains offer a more reliable solution and will equip some of the drilling vessels that will  be built in the future. In order to continuously improve its level of service and meet the customer’s needs as well as possible, a specific assembly line was put in place in the Troyes plant in 2012.

SEDIS, SOME KEY DATES

  • Sedis was the first chain manufacturer in the world to receive ISO 9001 certification, in 1989
  • In 1994, Sedis acquired Ergé et Sebin, the mechanical chain for heavy-duty conveyor belts.
  • Sedis deployed EDI with its French and international partners as early as 1995
  • Its Verrières de Joux plant operates without making any external discharges since 1995
  • Sedis created a “Special Chains” department in 1998 to offer its customers made-to-measure chains
  • Sedis installed its first robotic systems on the Verrières de Joux plant’s production lines in 2007
  • In 2009, Sedis put a  tensioner and cutting-to-length machine in place that is unique in Europe
  • A specific Offshore chain assembly workshop was set up in 2012
  • Sedis speeded up its international growth with its Italian branch  SEDIS SERVICE CENTER in 2014, its SEDIS SERVICE CENTER branch in Birmingham in 2016, and its German subsidiary in 2016