A HUNDRED YEARS HISTORY
Driven by challenges for 100 years, the SMRC teams have been daily committed to providing service to our customers around the world. Let’s get through our company’s story.
Manufacturing rainware and saddles
1914 marked the beginning of the Reydel adventure when Joseph Reydel created a company producing rainware and bicycle saddles in the city of Villeurbanne in the center of France.In January 1935 Joseph Reydel decided to sell the company to Jean Bourgois who moved the plant to the Paris region and the Reydel teams continued manufacturing all kinds of saddles until the beginning of the war.
Adaptation to modernity
After the war and since the world was evolving, Mr. Bourgois realized that the plant was not adapted to its activity anymore and decided to move it in 1948 to the North of France. Its new geostrategic location was Gondecourt. Thanks to these changes and to the invention of the moped Reydel boosted its activity to be multiplied by 4.Reydel’s products started to be made out of leather and progressively plastic materials and elements were tested. 1956 marked the turning point of the company using cutting edge materials on almost every product meeting customers’ needs. In this perspective, Reydel’s teams dedicated their production exclusively to moped manufacturers Peugeot Cycles and Motobécane.
Entering the Automotive Market
Thanks to this technological evolution, the Reydel teams developed new engineering skills. Therefore in 1959 Reydel produced its first plastic parts for an automaker entering the automotive market.
Reydel’s first Instrument Panel manufactured by the teams in Gondecourt was made for the Renault 12 in 1969, then followed the R 10 and R 16.
Development continued with the production of armrests for the Renault 15, 17 and 5 and of door trims for the Peugeot 204, 304 and 504.
Innovation continued as the first “thermoformed” Instrument Panel was produced in 1974, a proof of the unique know how of the company’s engineers.
Agility and proximity
The following years, the company went through a diversification of products and activities opening subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and France and in 1980 it became a dedicated automotive supplier.
The just in time activity started in Gondecourt and the company continued to adapt to the automakers’ demanding needs, always improving the quality of its products and obtaining in 1994 a Quality Award from Fiat.
The group then decided to focus on the automotive market. Therefore, following Peugeot’s advice, it created a joint venture with a fabric manufacturer and continued its strategy of implantation close to the customer’s sites.
From international influence to market specialist
In 1995, Plastic Omnium bought the Reydel group and 4 years later, in 1999, the automotive American group Visteon acquired the company which became its Interiors Products Group. Under the Visteon brand, innovation and development continued improving all its products range.
On November 1st 2014, Cerberus Capital Management acquired the Interiors business of Visteon to create a new player in the automotive market.
On August 2, 2018 the Reydel group was acquired by the Samvardhana Motherson Group to become Samvardhana Motherson Reydel Companies.