How Petit Bateau reduced its energy consumption by 23% at its industrial site

The Saint-Joseph plant is Petit Bateau's historic site. It consumes 11 gigawatt-hours of gas and 3 gigawatt-hours of electricity every year, reflecting the intensity of the industrial processes carried out there.

The post-COVID cost explosion

After COVID, Petit Bateau suffered, like many industrial companies, a sharp rise in energy costs. The teams then decided to engage in a serious review of their consumption patterns, both at process and building level. It was in this context that Petit Bateau called on Qualisteo.

Qualisteo was already familiar with the site's electrical infrastructure, which facilitated the deployment of comprehensive instrumentation and the installation of sub-meters across all facilities.

Making consumption visible in order to act

Once consumption was made visible station by station, the first actions followed fairly quickly.

In the administrative building, equipment that continued to run over the weekend was identified. Shutdown checklists were introduced so that teams knew exactly what had to be switched off at the end of the week.

Real-time monitoring also made it possible to detect anomalies that would otherwise have gone unnoticed for days.

One Monday morning, the data showed overconsumption throughout the entire weekend. Tracing back the cause, the teams discovered that a valve had been opened in error by an operator due to a missing label. The same logic applies to water monitoring via dedicated sub-meters: as soon as a valve remains abnormally open, an alert enables rapid intervention and correction.

€435,000 in annual savings validated by the IPMVP protocol

Over the 2023-2025 period, taking 2021 as the reference year — i.e. before the project launch and site instrumentation — the reduction in overall consumption reached 23%, covering both gas and electricity. These results were measured and validated according to the IPMVP protocol, the international reference for measuring and verifying energy performance.

In concrete terms, this represents an average of €435,000 in annual savings on the site's energy bill.

This industrial energy efficiency approach demonstrates that data visibility, combined with day-to-day changes in practices, can produce significant and lasting results without necessarily relying on major investments.