Villeroy & Boch: Innovation from tradition

Brand story by Markus Hieke
Mettlach, Germany
09.11.23

A model of success: In Mettlach, right on the frontiers of Germany, France and Luxembourg, Villeroy & Boch brings together all the expertise of its outstanding production network.

Washbasins from Mettlach, furniture and mirrors from Treuchtlingen, and so on – Villeroy & Boch has a considerable production network for its comprehensive range of products for holistic bathroom design

It is a mammoth logistical task: tableware, glasses, accessories and cutlery, kitchen sinks and fittings, as well as bathroom ceramics and numerous other articles for holistic bathroom design. Villeroy & Boch has twelve production sites throughout Europe and one in Thailand. In addition, there are suppliers for individual components, fittings and mirror glass. And whether it's bathroom and wellness or dining and lifestyle, all the threads come precisely together at its Mettlach headquarters, so that consumers can benefit from the enormous variety offered without being confronted with the associated complexity.

In the video, Sebastian Schneider and Florian Kallus from Cologne-based design studio kaschkasch go into detail about the design idea behind their Antao holistic bathroom collection for Villeroy & Boch

Behind the scenes

Let us here, though, follow some of these threads backwards, using the example of the comprehensive new bathroom collection, Antao, developed by Cologne-based design duo kaschkasch, where multi-faceted innovative expertise is on show. Take the washbasins and countertop washbasins produced in Mettlach, for example, whose filigree contours are only possible today thanks to TitanCeram, which was introduced in 2015. The material composition of quartz, feldspar and clay in combination with titanium oxide allows for thin, extremely precise wall thicknesses with simultaneous high levels of stability. In addition, cleaning is significantly simplified thanks to the dirt-repellent CeramicPlus coating.

A place with history: today's headquarters in Mettlach were once a Benedictine abbey until Jean-François Boch bought the baroque building in 1809 and set up a tableware factory within it

An equally fascinating material is also used in bathtub production at the Roden site in the Netherlands, namely Quaryl®, a mixture of 60% fine quartz powder and high-quality sanitary acrylic produced exclusively by Villeroy & Boch. The result is a material that can be shaped in a variety of ways, with high-grade durability and a pleasant feel, and which customers can have delivered in a special colour on request.

The bathtub of the Antao collection is made from Quaryl® at the Villeroy & Boch site in Roden, the Netherlands

It doesn't get much more individual than this. Villeroy & Boch also makes this possible in relation to the various cabinets from the Antao collection, which are manufactured at another location in Treuchtlingen, Bavaria, and whose material quality, as well as the high levels of craftsmanship that go into producing them, make them more than a match for the challenging conditions of the bathroom.

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