FB Procédés celebrates its 30th anniversary! - Fernand Barré

February 2021, in a small village in Morbihan, France, we meet Monsieur Fernand Barré, now 89. For many of you, this name means nothing. But take a look at the initials. Yes, FB. We owe him the invention of our bar screen technology, the gravity system, as well as the creation of our company FB Procédés. A rare and pleasant moment in the company of someone most of our current employees don't know, since he retired in 1993.

Hello Fernand, could you start by telling us about your career path?

I started out as an industrial draughtsman at Les Batignolles in Nantes. We made paper machines. I hadn't been able to get a good education because my father had come back from the war as a prisoner and died soon after, I think in five years. And my mother couldn't afford to send my brother and me to certain schools.

However, I wanted to move on anyway, and I soon wanted to leave this big company where some people weren't doing much and it wasn't really my frame of mind.

Where did you go from there?

While continuing to work, I enrolled in evening classes at an engineering school. I didn't actually get my official diploma, as I would have had to continue at the school for another two years, and it was a bit late for me as I was already married.

But there was a structure at the time called "Ingénieurs professionnels", where I continued to train. People who excelled and learned there could progress without going to school. So I took my exam with them and got my diploma, which never left my house.

I responded to a job offer in the wastewater sector, a sector that few people knew about at the time. I found myself sizing wastewater treatment plants, studying treatment, calculating all the assemblies, motor power, reinforced concrete and so on. In short, everything from A to Z.

That's what interested me, managing from start to finish. So I went on to work for 2-3 small companies in which I was in charge of the design office and construction sites. So I had some responsibility and, above all, the chance to see things up close. The work was exciting. I was even involved in sales, something I didn't know how to do.

How and when did you come up with the idea of launching your own bar screen?

In the early 80s, the company I was working for suffered the consequences of a sector that was no longer doing very well due to a lack of credit, and closed down. Like the others, I was fired. So I tried to find another company, but at the age of 50, and in a sector that wasn't doing so well...

That's when I said to myself: I'm not going to ring any doorbells, I know a lot of engineers (rural engineering or highways and bridges) who were launching the projects to which we needed to respond, I've got experience... and I had an idea for a bar screen in my head. I'd often seen them being repaired in local workshops, as they didn't work properly because they were too mechanical. I had some ideas, based on the principle that I needed a rustic bar screen that wasn't too mechanical.

What were your initial specifications and feedback before you started?

The starting point: simplicity! I'm a simple man and I don't like complicated things. I remember when customers first came to see me and asked about maintenance and adjustments, I would tell them that there was little maintenance to be done and no adjustments. I used to say: there are no adjustments because there are no maladjustments! This was very surprising.

Before taking the plunge, I realized that bar screens were expensive, worked as well as they could, but often broke down. When I'd go out to construction sites and see a bar screen that wasn't working, I'd have to try a few things to get it working again. The bar screens of the time also had bottom-to-top grids. I'd done a lot of hydraulics and didn't see the need. They were still complicated, often with two motors, and they spent 2-3 days adjusting the bar screen without much success. As soon as there was a little wear, it stopped working. Mechanics in dirty water just couldn't work.

From there, I cogitated and it kind of comes on its own if you like. You don't want it to be too mechanical, so let's make it farm-type equipment, without that being a pejorative, and easy to install. On this last point, it was more personal because I didn't have the time. I wanted the assembly to be quick and take no more than 2-3 hours. I also wanted it to work without necessarily being well installed.

So how did you go about designing your bar screen?

I didn't have any money. So I started by putting my ideas on plans, since I had a drawing board at home. I tried to apply simple techniques like the lever, the wedge, the counterweight or the slope. That's physics. I didn't want any possible breakdowns. So I made a wooden model, set in motion with a crank.

For the gate, why put bars all the way to the top? It was illogical. We calculate the effluent flow through the grate, the head losses, etc. That's enough. So I limited the height of the grate. Then I put clearance everywhere. When there's clearance, it always works. That's what I told my first customers. Fortunately, I knew them well...

You also had to take into account what you wanted to recover with the bar screens. On the ones I'd seen before, all you needed was nylon stockings or bicycle chains to make them jam. So, when you like mechanics as I understand it, you turn around a solution and something clicks. Sometimes, just by putting a part or a thing upside down, it may seem surprising, but it can work.

Compared with your initial ideas, were there any significant modifications to the first bar screens?

For example, at the outset, I was going to operate my bar screen with a chain, but it wasn't elastic enough, and I needed it to be flexible in the event of shocks or something. Then one day, I went to a worksite and saw a tractor lifting a load with a fairly small strap. I said to myself: that's going to break! I went to see the driver and he told me it could resist up to 5 tons. I immediately asked him where he bought it. From that moment on, the strap met all my criteria and became an obvious choice.

How did you get in touch with the Martin company for manufacturing?

Oh yes, Claude Martin, a clear-sighted guy, was the second man in the case. With his brother, he ran a boiler-making business in Gesté. I knew him from sewage treatment plants, where he supplied locksmiths. It was also thanks to him that we got into this business. He was quick to say "I'm in", he invested and he helped me advertise the company with photos of his trucks and workshops. It was reassuring because it looked serious, whereas FB Procédés had nothing.

Without Claude Martin, none of this would have been possible.

And tell us a little about the first commercial steps...

I'd talked about it to a lot of engineers I knew very well. They encouraged me, telling me that it was a real need in their daily lives. However, when I arrived with my machine, things weren't quite so rosy because they had to talk to their boss.

I went out on the road to trade, but I didn't like it.

I've been lucky enough to have experience and to know potential customers. A young person wouldn't have known so many people in the industry, for example. On job sites, we always ate lunch together, and that inevitably created bonds. Those were the days when we had time on our hands. Things were watered down and you'd sometimes end up with a box of cigars on your bill.

Do you remember the first bar screens sold?

Yes, it seems to me that there was one for SAUR to install on the outskirts of Nantes and a second at Huelgoat in Finistère on a slaughterhouse with a 6mm air gap. I knew the guy and he was interested to know how our bar screens would work. He was in charge of maintenance and was "bored" with expensive machines that didn't work.

Well, they were skeptical anyway, and the deal was clear: "We'll let it run for 6 months and then we'll pay you". I couldn't disagree. And there was no need to talk about references, because I didn't have any. I was really confident in what I had designed. My wooden model was working well, and the first tests with Claude in the workshop had confirmed this.

Who did the on-site assembly back then?

I used to do them all the time. I knew how things were done in the communes in those days, where municipal employees were always ready to help. I'd pretend to show them the bar screen from A to Z, and they'd come over without batting an eyelid to help me install the machine. Quite often, I didn't even have to lend a hand. And everyone was happy.

In 1991, tell us how the partnership with Patrick Dupré went before you retired.

Patrick and I had worked together at one time. And then, as fate would have it, he passed my house regularly, as we lived nearby. His company at the time wanted to relocate to Le Mans, I believe, and he knew the wastewater business. We talked it over and I suggested he take over. I knew him as a very good mechanic and handyman. Do-it-yourself means a lot of things, it's all in the mind. And then I saw that he was a very good businessman. So it was he who inflated the ball of yarn, because when I left it with him, it wasn't very big.

At the time, I was doing one bar screen a month. It was good, but I was spending more time on my drawing board than out finding new customers. So Patrick said, "I'll take it". I told him he was right because there was a big market. So he spent two years with me, learning a bit about bar screens and the customers I knew. I became an employee and he became CEO for 24 months.

It was then that we created the company's first logo with the water drop. The company was in good hands, so I stopped in 1993. I'd had enough of the road work, the building sites and all that... I left with a light heart.

You mentioned the logo, but how did you come up with the company name?

To tell the truth, I quickly decided that "FB" was the right word. I wanted to put "systems" behind it, but we were still in "franglais". So I decided to put "procédés" instead. Maybe I should have done the opposite, but that's how it worked out. I quickly registered the name. I remember wanting to do more at the time, to make it clear that we were a company with a lot of processes, but I left it at that.