Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Consumer products |
Founded | 1956 [1] |
Founder | Marc Grégoire [1] |
Headquarters | , France |
Parent | Groupe SEB |
Website | tefal |
Tefal S.A.S. (a portmanteau of TEFlon and ALuminium. [3] ) is a French cookware and small appliance manufacturer, owned by Groupe SEB (a global manufacturer of cookware) since 1968. [4] The company is known for creating the non-stick cookware category [3] and for offering frying equipment with a low requirement of fat or oils. [5]
In the United States, Tefal is marketed as T-fal. [6] This is to comply with DuPont's objection that the name "Tefal" was too close to DuPont's trademark "Teflon". [1] The T-fal brand is also used in Canada [7] and Japan. [8] [9]
Besides cookware and cooking appliances, the Tefal brand is also applied to home appliances such as steam irons [10] and vacuum cleaners. [11]
In August 2022, the ARS (Regional Health Agency) of Haute-Savoie sampled drinking water in Rumilly, and discovered that the level of PFOA, a compound whose use has been banned since 2020, was 1.5 times higher than the maximum health value. [12]
In February 2023, the newspaper Le Monde published an article on PFAS contamination at certain French sites, pointing the finger at the Rumilly production site and highlighting the massive contamination of groundwater in the area. Former employees accused the Seb group of "dumping its PTFE sludge by truck in what used to be a landfill site", which the group denied. [13]
A month later, the prefecture and ARS of Haute-Savoie issued a statement advising people "not to eat fish caught in the Rumilly area".
In 2013, a case of influence peddling broke out in Annecy.
Tefal management wanted to modify the employment contracts of certain employees, but a workers' union refused.
The tug-of-war lasted several weeks, until the labor inspectorate intervened. The labor inspector in charge of the case discovered an irregularity in the 35-hour agreement signed thirteen years earlier and asked for it to be renegotiated, but management refused.
Philip Paillard of the Union des Industries et Métiers de la Métallurgie and Human Resources Director Dan Abergel decide to put pressure on the labor inspector to get her transferred.
Tefal management also contacted the intelligence services. [14]
The inspector soon received pressure and threats from her superiors. The press revealed that the company had agreed to recruit a close associate of Philippe Dumont, the departmental director of labor, in exchange for putting pressure on the labor inspector on behalf of the company.
Tefal decided to lodge a complaint against the labor inspector for breach of professional secrecy and handling stolen goods. The Annecy public prosecutor, Eric Maillaud, a close friend of Philippe Dumont, decides to follow up the complaint, not against the company or the inspectorate director, but against the labor inspector and the whistleblower to "clean up" the labor inspectorate. On June 5, 2015, hundreds of people demonstrated outside the court in support of the labor inspector.
The trial is adjourned until October 16. At the same time, trade unions from the Ministry of Labor , local interprofessional unions and Tefal's CGT and FO sections call for a rally in front of the court.
In January 2016, labor inspector Laura Pfeiffer was awarded the "Ethics Prize" by the Anticor association for her work in this case. Nevertheless, in November 2016, she was convicted on appeal for breach of professional secrecy and concealment of confidential documents. In May 2017, journalist Inès Léraud presented a report on the case on the TV program Les Pieds sur terre. [15]
In October 2018, the Cour de cassation overturned the sentence and requested that the case be retried in light of the article of the Sapin II law providing protection for whistleblowers. The case was retried before the same Lyon court in September 2019, with judgment reserved until October 24 of the same year.
On October 24, 2019, the Lyon Court of Appeal, ruling on a referral, nonetheless confirmed Laura Pfeiffer's conviction for "concealment of breach of secrecy of correspondence and breach of professional secrecy", with a €3,500 fine and €1,000 in damages in favor of the civil parties. The Court did not uphold the benefits of the Sapin II Act and the resulting criminal irresponsibility, as the necessary criteria were not met in this case, in particular compliance with a "graduated procedure", disinterestedness, and "taking particular precautions before making public the subject of the alert": "By disregarding all the rules of investigation and professional practices applicable to all labor inspectors, and by knowingly concealing electronic correspondence, Laura Pfeiffer behaved in a manner that was not only hasty but also totally inappropriate".
Savoy is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps. Situated on the cultural boundary between Occitania and Piedmont, the area extends from Lake Geneva in the north to the Dauphiné in the south and west and to the Aosta Valley in the east.
Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene, and has numerous applications because it is chemically inert. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off from DuPont, which originally discovered the compound in 1938.
Haute-Savoie is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of Southeastern France, bordering both Switzerland and Italy. Its prefecture is Annecy. To the north is Lake Geneva; to the south and southeast are Mont Blanc and the Aravis mountain range.
Perfluorooctanoic acid is a perfluorinated carboxylic acid produced and used worldwide as an industrial surfactant in chemical processes and as a material feedstock. PFOA is considered a surfactant, or fluorosurfactant, due to its chemical structure, which consists of a perfluorinated, n-heptyl "tail group" and a carboxylate "head group". The head group can be described as hydrophilic while the fluorocarbon tail is both hydrophobic and lipophobic.
Tournus is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France.
The arrondissement of Annecy is an arrondissement of France in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. It has 79 communes. Its population is 282,319 (2016), and its area is 1,261.6 km2 (487.1 sq mi).
The arrondissement of Thonon-les-Bains is an arrondissement of France in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. It has 68 communes. Its population is 145,809 (2016), and its area is 907.7 km2 (350.5 sq mi).
Groupe SEB is a large French consortium that produces small appliances, and it is the world's largest manufacturer of cookware. Notable brand names associated with Groupe SEB include All-Clad, IMUSA, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, Tefal and WMF Group. According to the Groupe SEB website, they have faced considerable competition from low-price Chinese competitors, but have managed to maintain a constant sales level. A large proportion of their product lines are now manufactured in China. Its headquarters are in Ecully, a Lyon suburb.
Thonon Evian Grand Genève Football Club, formerly Evian Thonon Gaillard FC, commonly referred to as Thonon Evian or just Evian, is a French association football club based in Thonon-les-Bains that was founded on 1 July 2007. It competes in the Championnat National 2, the fourth tier of the French football league system.
Modane is a commune in the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France.
The Rugby Club Savoie Rumilly is a French rugby union club based in Rumilly in Haute-Savoie department. It's playing en Fédérale 1., the third level of French Rugby,
A non-stick surface is engineered to reduce the ability of other materials to stick to it. Non-stick cookware is a common application, where the non-stick coating allows food to brown without sticking to the pan. Non-stick is often used to refer to surfaces coated with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a well-known brand of which is Teflon. In the twenty-first century, other coatings have been marketed as non-stick, such as anodized aluminium, silica, enameled cast iron, and seasoned cookware.
Football Club d'Annecy is a French football club based in the town of Annecy in Haute-Savoie. The team plays its home matches at the Parc des Sports, where the club and its predecessor have been based since 1964. It currently competes in the Ligue 2.
The Albanais is a small Savoyard region situated between Lake Annecy and Lac du Bourget, at the entrance to the Parc naturel régional du Massif des Bauges. Located in the French departments of Savoie and Haute-Savoie, its principal city is Rumilly. The name Albanais comes from the Latin Albinnum, which is derived from the names of the tribes Albii whose presence is attested to in the toponymy of places such as Albens, Alby, and Albigny.
The Pionniers de Chamonix Mont-Blanc are a French ice hockey team based in Chamonix, Haute-Savoie. They play in the country's top tier, the Ligue Magnus. For their inaugural 2016–17 season, they were known as Pionniers de Chamonix-Morzine.
Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan. The story dramatizes Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. It stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, along with Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper, and Bill Pullman.
Despite the best efforts of the government, health, and environmental agencies, improper use of hazardous chemicals is pervasive in commercial products, and can yield devastating effects, from people developing brittle bones and severe congenital defects, to strips of wildlife laying dead by poisoned rivers.
Angélique Gérard, born Angélique Dilscher in 1975 in Fontainebleau, France, is a French business personality specializing in telecommunications.
The 2021–22 Coupe de France preliminary rounds, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes was the qualifying competition to decide which teams from the leagues of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France took part in the main competition from the seventh round.
1968 Acquisition of Tefal and ...
TEFAL household appliances appear under the T-FAL brand in some territories like America and Japan.(PDF file under the warranty web page)