The company survived a tumultuous 20th century and several flirtations with bankruptcy. Now under new management, it is working to recapture the glory days of the enamel advertising industry, betting that its small-scale, custom-made and high-quality output can hold its own against low-cost, industrial enamel producers. The history of Emaillerie Belge and of brewing in Brussels are closely intertwined, and beer remains central to the company's latest revival.
The wow effect
"I had a wow effect." Vincent Vanden Borre tries to explain how a visit to Emaillerie Belge's factory led a 26-year-old Flemish business executive to run a failing enamel factory. "I was just so impressed with the craftsmanship, the authenticity, the niche of the product, the quality of the workmanship," he says.
"I was so impressed with the craftsmanship, the authenticity, the niche of the product, the quality of the workmanship."
Two years after taking over as leader, he is still trying to match this first impression for visiting customers. The factory has since moved to an old clothing warehouse across the street from an Audi site scraping plant in the Brussels suburb of Forest, but Vanden Borre took most of the old equipment with him. It's all housed under one vaulted wooden roof - the furnace and packaging equipment on the main shop floor, with several studios split off into smaller side rooms.
As Vanden Borre points out the various stages of production - screen printing, enamel mixing, paint spraying - and where they take place, we are blown in the face by a gasp of hot air. Workmen in blue aprons flip open the furnace and prepare to lead unfinished panels on a lemon-yellow conveyor belt into the blazing pink heat of the factory's kiln. Apart from the muffled ticking of Vanden Borre and the clink of panels on their hooks, the factory is silent.
Wall of Honor
Opposite the furnace, the entire surface of a two-story wall is devoted to advertising panels from Emaillerie Belge's past. There are so many that, even if you step back, it is difficult to look at them all at once. This jumble of rectangles, squares and circles outlines a visual history of Belgian drinking habits after the war. Palm, Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, BelleVue, Vedett. But also Spa Citron, Coca Cola and Sandeman's Port. Among all these is a limited edition gold-bossed Chimay panel, with a striking gold-bossed finish shining under the factory's fluorescent lights, made for the 2014 launch of Chimay Grand Rèserve.
"We have Stella, we have Vedett, Duvel, Omer, La Trappe - we have so many!"
Beer advertising has been a central part of Emaillerie Belge's output since the beginning, and the company still has a legacy of repeat customers - "Stella, we have Vedett, Duvel, Omer, La Trappe - we have so many!" says Vanden Borre. Since taking over in 2016, he has tried to interest some of Belgium's newer breweries and has produced materials for Wieze beer and Petre Devos, among others - two extinct beers being revived, like Emaillerie Belge, by Flemish entrepreneurs.
Beer panels make up about 60-70% of the factory's output, in addition to new forays into art, design and architecture. Even though the company now makes tables, sinks, cabinets and subway signs, beer is the common thread in Emaillerie Belge's history, as evidenced by the wall of advertising panels, and a batch of Orval ads that just came out of the furnace are set aside, wrapped in bubble wrap and ready to be shipped to the monastery.
A history of enamel
Upstairs, a room with a low ceiling under the roof is full of gray moving boxes piled high, with words like "Zundert," "La Rulles" and "Bockor" scrawled on them in thick blue marker. This is the archives of the enameling plant, and the boxes contain copies of screen prints of every panel the plant has made since it opened in 1921. Production began in Molenbeek when it was still the Petit Manchester of Belgium.
The trajectory of the enamel industry in Brussels mirrored its brewing customers. Both the explosive interwar boom followed by a postwar Indian summer transitioned into a slow, grueling, inevitable decline marked by failed attempts to abandon their core product. Eventually, like its brewing equivalent Brasserie Cantillon, Emaillerie Belge remained as the only enamel factory left in Brussels.
Boomtown
In the good times, the enamel shop's customers were beverage companies - not just beer, but Coca-Cola and coffee - and orders for road signs and businesses. "The 1940s and 1950s were the boom times for Emaillerie Belge," says Vanden Borre; at its peak, Brussels had nine enamel factories, with Emaillerie Belge employing 138 people. Bans on public advertising in the late 1950s crippled the industry, and Emaillerie Belge refocused its operations on commercially lucrative and cheaper materials - aluminum, PVC and neon. After the company changed hands in the 1990s, it had returned to its core work in enamels and saw an increase in sales due to the growing popularity of enameled strip boards.
But eventually decay struck. Despite a new increase in sales thanks to a growing market for enameled comic book plates, the last owner of Emaillerie Belge prior to its acquisition by Vanden Borre was winding down the business in the expectation that he would sell it or simply close it when he finally retired. "Emaillerie Belge would cease operations in September 2016. They would close the books, it was done, the building was already sold," he says.
"Emaillerie Belge would cease operations in September 2016. They would close the books, it was done, the building was already sold."
When Vanden Borre heard about the possible sale, he made that first visit that left him impressed and curious about the unrealized potential. He had two weeks to decide what to do. "I didn't have time to look at the books ... I knew it was bad, but I didn't know at the time that it was that bad," he says. "And my head started spinning. What is enamel? What can we do with it? What new markets can we play in? ... And with the wow effect, [I thought], this is more than enough motivation."
The marriage of tradition and modernity
The move to a new building and the push into new markets aside, Vanden Borre was eager to bring the old Emaillerie Belge into its iteration of the business. Although the kiln is brand new, they still print the enamel designs on the same battered electric blue screen printer. This is placed in one of the factory's side rooms, next to display panels that show the various stages of enameling - first a metal base layer, then a green layer, a blue layer, a white layer, and so on, until it merges into a clear image.
Vanden Borre also kept the five employees who remained in the old factory because, he says, working with enamels is a technically precise profession that you can only learn by working directly with the materials, and people with that kind of experience are hard to find. Many of the old and new employees are Brussels natives, and this was an important factor for Vanden Borre to keep the company in Brussels when he took over, when it would have been easier and cheaper to find a new location outside the city limits.
Just as important as logistical concerns was his opinion that the Emaillerie Belge concept would not work if it was torn out of its Brussels context: "Abroad - in Luxembourg, in Switzerland - they often call us Emaillerie Bruxelles." A third reason for staying, he says, was that: "Brussels wanted us to stay here."
Manufacturing belongs in the city
One of the Brussels administrators most eager to keep employers like Emaillerie Belge in Brussels is Kristiaan Borret. Borret has been the Brussels Master Builder (chief architect - literally, "Master Builder") since 2015. In this advisory role, he leads the city's architecture and urban planning and is committed to preserving the industry the city still has and luring back the lost industries. As he argues, "Manufacturing belongs to the city...[It] should be encouraged in the city as an integral part of the urban fabric."
"Production belongs to the city ... [It] should be encouraged in the city as an integral part of the urban fabric."
Emaillerie Belge, a small-scale, relatively light industry that employs skilled manual labor in a part of Brussels struggling with chronic unemployment since a previous generation of industry left the city, fits perfectly into Borret's plans. His activism was enough to support the creation of a new brewing center on the Tour & Taxis site. And it convinced Emaillerie Belge to stay in Brussels.
Coloring outside the lines
Existential questions addressed, the challenge for Vanden Borre now is to ensure that Emaillerie Belge can compete with producers of standard enamel from Central and Eastern Europe. They can afford to undercut its prices, even if the perceived quality of the final product is lower. Vanden Borre hopes a commitment to what he sees as their superior production skills and niche brand will carry them through. "Our name ... Emaillerie Belge is directly associated with quality, service and workmanship," he says.
To demonstrate this, Vanden Borre opens a door to a side room that reeks of Airfix model glue and is filled with a kaleidoscope of colored glass jars. Here they mix and match enamel finishes and colors to meet their customers' requirements. This means that, unlike their cheaper rivals who use purchased color mixes, they can conjure up specific colors for each of their designs, be it the deep blue of Chimay, the royal purple of La Trappe or the muddy river green of an Orval trout.
Do not accept replicas
Custom colors aside, Emaillerie Belge only produces beer ads to order; their rivals from Central Europe are much less reluctant to release unofficial replicas, according to Vanden Borre. So the next time you're in your local Belgian-inspired bar, check the wall around you to see what beer ads are hanging. "If it's a new production, an official production, there's a 90% chance it's from here," says Vanden Borre.
"If it's a new official production, there's a 90 percent chance it will come from here."
To be sure, and especially if it is an older model, you can check the bottom corner of the panel. If you can read the words "L'Emaillerie Belge Bruxelles," you can be sure it was pressed and printed by Brussels hands.
Original article: Beercity
