The company made a name for itself in 2018, when it installed the first fluorescent bicycle path in Pessac. Today, the process has been adopted on around a hundred trails.
Nine companies from the Gironde are exhibiting at JEC World, the major composite materials trade show in Paris, with its 1,200 exhibitors from over 100 countries. Among them is Pessac-based OliKrom and its fluorescent bicycle paths. The first one was installed in 2018, and there are now a hundred or so...
Like all the other major trade shows, JEC World, the trade show for composite material professionals, is back after a two-year absence, and will be held at the Villepinte exhibition center in Paris from May 3 to 5. Nine companies from the Gironde are taking part in this event, which brings together 1,200 exhibitors from 112 countries. The show promises to feature over 500 innovations, and is expected to attract more than 40,000 visitors, mainly professionals. Among the Girondins represented is Olikrom, founded in 2014 in Pessac, which hasn't missed an edition since its inception.
The company made a name for itself in 2018, when it set up the first fluorescent bicycle path in Pessac, which at the time it was the only one to do. Today, the process has been adopted on around a hundred cycle paths, thanks to contracts signed with communes, communities of communes, or with companies responsible for road markings.
It's coming to Canada, and soon to Africa
These trails, made possible by a kind of paint that stores daylight and glows at night, have been set up in several communes in Gironde, including Pessac, Talence, Arcachon and La Teste, but also elsewhere in France, in communes such as Annecy (Haute-Savoie), Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) and Evreux (Eure). A technology which, according to the company, is being rolled out in Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, and which could also arrive on the African continent.
Bicycle lanes are the company's most visible achievement, and it also deals more generally with color-changing materials for industrial safety. The company operates in the petrochemical, nuclear, energy and healthcare sectors. While most of these contracts are subject to confidentiality rules, OliKrom explains that it works with the gas transport network, installing parts that change color when they detect the first signs of corrosion. "Because the color change is something that everyone can understand, and which immediately alerts, signals and identifies that there's an anomaly somewhere", explains Jean-François Letard, OliKrom's managing director.
