Archiveco Sets Up 27th Document Archive Site at Charleval in Provence

Archiveco has received the label "Invest in Provence" for its investment in Provence

The French archive management and storage company Archiveco has embraced the digital era with two external growth projects announced in 2017 and an increase in earnings of 30%. A genuine memory bank for more than 5500 French businesses and institutions, Archiveco took possession of its 27th French archive storage site in May 2017. The group's CEO Jacques Thibon had tasked Provence Promotion with finding the best possible location in Provence. His choice of site for his more than €3.5M investment finally fell on the town of Charleval, in the north of the Bouches-du-Rhône.

The conservation of administrative paperwork, invoices and technical documents is a legal requirement. Around 5500 clients, including banks, insurance companies, airlines, health agencies and transportation firms, entrust the safekeeping of their hard-copy archives to Archiveco, which is licensed by the state's Service Interministériel des Archives de France to manage and store public records.

Since its founding in 1982, the group has built a web of facilities across France, which today offers 27 sites for document storage. "We took the decision to build a new center in the Bouches-du-Rhône to reinforce our presence in the Aix-Marseille Provence area," revealed Archiveco's general manager Pierre François at the facility's inauguration on June 16th 2017.

The company, which had called on the services of Provence Promotion a few years previously to help it find the ideal location for this type of activity, commissioned the new facility in May 2017. Sited in 2 hectares of grounds, the new center covers 3350 sq. m. and has 140,000 linear meters (14,000 cu. m.) of storage divided into three "cells" covering a zone from Nice to Montpellier. "We established contact with the town hall at Charleval and invested €3.5M. With optimized processes, the site will be able to run at full capacity with a team of five," explains François.

The red tape was officially cut at a ceremony last Friday in the presence of Mr. Yves Wigt, Mayor of Charleval, Provence Promotion, clients and project stakeholders. The event was also marked with the awarding of the Invest in Provence Label to Archiveco's general manager in recognition of the company's investment in the Aix Marseille Provence metro area.

Putting the Accent on Digitization to Boost Growth

Unlike most other, classic storage centers, Archiveco's sites do not generate much trucking activity. "We scan over 100,000 pages each day. The digitization of documents is particularly useful when the client needs frequent and rapid access to the original. This is the case in the banking sector," notes Pierre François.

Started ten years ago, Archiveco's digital department has several servers around France with a totally redundant structure. The Avignon site hosts the digitizing center for the South of France.

Although physical archive storage currently accounts for 85% of the company's €24M annual earnings, a quiet revolution is underway in the industry. As Pierre François declares, "We are going digital, with the ongoing acquisition of two entities specialized in electronic document management and storage. At present, the digital side represents 15% of our business and it is set to grow very substantially starting this year. We expect to see our earnings jump by 30% in 2017."

Archiveco is aiming to pass €50 M€ in 2020, of which a half from digital archives. The company currently stores more than 4.4 million boxes –the equivalent of more than 2200 kilometers of archives- and more than 250,000 items of audio-video and IT material. The Archiveco Group's staff numbers are due to increase too, with around a hundred EDM specialists expected to join its 240-strong workforce by the end of this year.