From a regional SME to an international group

In 2021, in order to affirm our purpose and to better reflect our role of unlocking animal biomass value, we have changed our logo and created 7 market brands.

Our focus is now more than ever on the quality of the finished products, listening to and satisfying the needs of our customers and of their customers.

Our objective is to ensure the satisfaction of our stakeholders, wherever they may be in France or abroad: our supplier-partners, our customers who use animal ingredients, our rendering service customers, the people living near our sites, and of course our employees.

After a period of expansion, AKIOLIS refocused its business activities on animal materials with ATEMAX and SOLEVAL and strengthened its position in the West, North-East and South-West.

A geographical reorganisation led to the closure of the two plants in the South-East and the sale of the business assets of the collection centers in this area.

In 2016, AKIOLIS became a 100% shareholder of VIOLLEAU and gave the company the boost needed to attain national status. This pairing also allowed ATEMAX to find a permanent outlet for its category 2 meat-and-bone meal used in the manufacture of organic fertilisers.

Today, AKIOLIS focuses its resources on animal materials and organic fertilisers. We invest in innovation to bring more value to the collection and processing of materials, and the recovery of products, in order to ultimately guarantee to our Upstream and Downstream customers both cost control and an equitable share of the value.

In 2008, the Caillaud group changed its name to AKIOLIS and created two distinct divisions to separate its activities. All rendering, collection and recovery activities of risk materials were grouped together within ATEMAX. Those related to the recovery of healthy co-products became SOLEVAL.

In 2010, the group acquired a stake in VIOLLEAU, a specialist in organic soil improvers and compost fertilisers made from animal and plant matter. This contribution enabled the company to build a new manufacturing plant for plugs in the Deux-Sèvres region in 2013.

At the same time, from 2009 to 2013, AKIOLIS expanded its collection offering to new holders of organic materials, secondary food processing industries, supermarkets, restaurants, and even local authorities, among others. The group also ventured into the markets for recovery of co-products derived from the bakery/biscuit making industries (with APEVAL), for recovery of used edible oils (with OLEOVIA) and for methanation.

These experiments were insufficiently profitable and were gradually stopped.

Caillaud's growth accelerated in 1986 when the company joined the Tessenderlo Group, a group of Belgian origin that already operated several gelatine manufacturing plants and wished to secure its stocks of bone minerals by incorporating the gelatine bone plant that Caillaud operated in Saint-Langis-lès-Mortagne. From then on, Caillaud had new avenues for growth thanks to the Tessenderlo Group, and continued pursuing its external growth strategy.

From 1986 to 2008, the "Caillaud Group" expanded in France by making significant acquisitions of companies operating in the same field: Progilor-Bouvart in the North-East, France Gras in the West and South-West, Ets Point in the South-East, Ets Charvet in the Paris region and the Ferso Bio/Solagra Group in the South-West.

To-date, each of the Caillaud Group's entities is simultaneously engaged in two lines of business: the collection and recovery of risk materials from animals on the one hand, and healthy animal materials on the other

Birth of Etablissements Caillaud in Saint-Langis-lès-Mortagne in the Orne region. Over the years, the company acquired several small rendering plants in the West and began to form a group with several factories.