Karine Char­bon­nier, Chair and CEO of Beck-Indus­tries, Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Region­al Coun­cil for Hauts-de-France, Del­e­gate for Train­ing & Enter­prise and God-Moth­er of the UTC’s class of 2019. 

Sit­ting on the Region­al Coun­cil for Hauts-de-France, Karine Char­bon­nier is in charge of liais­ing with enter­prise. She helps out when it comes to estab­lish­ing new busi­ness, take-overs and/or devel­op­ment for export can­di­dates, accom­pa­nies those who would like to inno­vate or sim­ply grow in size and scale, not for­get­ting the aid she can offer for recruit­ment and voca­tion­al train­ing. All told, this is a vast remit for a HEC grad­u­ate, who accept­ed, in 2005, the Chair­man­ship and CEO posi­tions for their fam­i­ly busi­ness Beck-Cre­spel, found­ed by her Great Grand­moth­er in Armen­tières open­ing the (fas­ten­ers, screws, acces­sories …) com­pa­ny to inter­na­tion­al mar­kets. “Train­ing I see as the defin­i­tive key here, includ­ing life­long learn­ing, being curi­ous, read­ing and train­ing all the way. Increas­ing­ly, we now observe alter­nate phas­es between train­ing peri­ods and nor­mal work­time. And that amounts to a pas­sion-dri­ven adven­ture”, she adds enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. The cen­tu­ry in which we live is also an engineer’s cen­tu­ry. Engi­neer­ing serv­ing humanity’s needs. Whether it be in mobil­i­ty & trans­port, in mate­ri­als or biotech­nolo­gies, we see the effects of inno­va­tion every­where. Tech­nolo­gies evolves fast. Con­se­quent­ly we must con­tin­ue to train our­selves to accom­pa­ny as best we can these changes. 

“Young peo­ple today have a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty. The future is theirs. I tend to agree with the famous max­im “Time is long but life is short*”. Life goes by so fast yet we all have a role to play. Let’s not for­get that a busi­ness com­pa­ny must be “win-win”, adds the Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Region­al Coun­cil for Hauts-de-France, Del­e­gate for Train­ing & Enter­prise. “Every­one should be enriched through train­ing. When you are young, you are not nec­es­sar­i­ly aware of the stakes. But every­one must be able to add his/her stone to the con­struc­tion”. /* bor­rowed from the famil­iar Latin trans­la­tion: ‘Ars lon­ga, vita bre­vis’, orig­i­nal­ly a Greek apho­rism we owe to Hippocrates

An entrepreneurial and innovative regional spirit

Enter­prise expects that young peo­ple dis­play per­son­al ambi­tion and work hard. The fact that they show ini­tia­tive, like their jobs and assume respon­si­bil­i­ties are virtues that busi­ness con­cerns appre­ci­ate a lot, both in this Region and beyond. The so-called SRDCEII (Region­al Scheme for Eco­nom­ic, Inno­va­tion and Inter­na­tion­als Affairs) is the guide­line pol­i­cy for the future of the area. “In our train­ing pol­i­cy guide­lines, we have inte­grat­ed some inno­v­a­tive con­tent. One of the major prin­ci­ples of our strat­e­gy lies in the links we must set up to bet­ter meet the needs of sec­tors and enter­pris­es recruit­ing per­son­nel, whether it be in terms of ori­en­ta­tion and man­age­ment of the train­ing course offers, or in terms of inform­ing the tar­get pop­u­la­tions (young peo­ple in train­ing, unem­ployed job seek­ers, salaried work­ers), in order to ensure that every­one can access the best infor­ma­tion apper­tain­ing to the pos­si­ble pro­fes­sion­al open­ings”, she adds. The Region­al author­i­ties – after launch­ing Proch’Emploi, which is a unique go-between for employ­ers and job-seek­ers – has now launched Pass For­ma­tion and Pass Emploi. Pass For­ma­tion [train­ing] has been designed to accom­pa­ny job-seek­ers’ indi­vid­ual projects allow­ing them to access a qual­i­fy­ing, or cer­ti­fied train­ing course, with a direct bear­ing on the pro­fes­sion­al projects (career evo­lu­tion, cre­ation or acqui­si­tion of a busi­ness con­cern). “Our Hauts-de-France Region is remark­able for the intrin­sic qual­i­ty of its enter­pris­es” con­cludes Karine Char­bon­nier. “Over 5 000 jobs were cre­at­ed in 2017, notably via our capac­i­ty to train, the seri­ous approach we take for our work and our sense of col­lec­tive, pub­lic or cor­po­rate interests”.

Beck Industries, a 100% family business

1918 was the year that marked the end of WWI and the adven­ture began in the ruins of the fam­i­ly baker’s shop, in Armen­tières, with Helene and George Beck as the shop-own­ers and man­agers. It was Helene who pro­posed they should nor rebuild the bak­ery and she set up busi­ness in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing – her sec­ond pas­sion – inas­much as she fore­saw a rapid growth of activ­i­ties as need­ed to (re)build the local min­ing and rail­road infra­struc­tures. This led to the com­pa­ny Beck-Crespel. 

From a family business to an international industrial group

A cen­tu­ry lat­er, what was orig­i­nal­ly a small fam­i­ly busi­ness, has become an inter­na­tion­al group with an annu­al turnover close to 90 Meu­ros. There is a net­work of sub­sidiaries round the world in strate­gic places: Gre­ta Britain, Ger­many, Chi­na and Moroc­co. With more than 600 employ­ees in the world group, Karine Char­bon­nier, Chair and CEO of Beck Indus­tries fore­sees a con­tin­u­a­tion of the strat­e­gy of expan­sion in order to ensure an export growth fac­tor high­er than 60% over the com­ing years, while pre­serv­ing the fam­i­ly spir­it as hand­ed down by her Father before she took over the business.