Cetie and Standardisation: Looking Back to Better Prepare for the Future

Why look back?

Preparing for the future often starts with a better understanding of the past. It is precisely in this spirit that Cetie is today embarking on an ambitious project: the creation of a wiki-style knowledge base, which will replace the current cetie.org platform for member company experts by mid-2027.

For the uninitiated, a wiki is a collaborative, structured knowledge base (think Wikipedia, but dedicated exclusively to Cetie's technical documents, their history and the discussions that gave rise to them). In practice, this new platform will allow members to navigate through successive versions of each document (versioning), access archives to trace a document back to its earliest versions, and above all establish direct links between meeting minutes and the documents they generated, to understand not only what was decided, but why and how. Documents currently available to the public will remain accessible to any company upon request, but in a more fluid and intuitive format than today.

This project has led the Cetie team to delve back into the association's archives; that journey through time reveals a history both richer and more complex than one might imagine.

1950–1960: Two structures, one shared conviction

It all began on 1 July 1950, with the foundation in Paris of the Institut National de l'Embouteillage et des Industries du Conditionnement (INE), a French non-profit association governed by the law of 1901. Its purpose: to encourage any study and initiative likely to promote the improvement and rationalisation of bottling and packaging. From the outset, the INE brought together major industrial groups in the liquid food sector, equipment manufacturers, packaging suppliers and representatives of public authorities.

Its founder, Pierre-Albert Caron, served as Secretary General, a role he would hold without interruption for over forty years. From November 1960, he launched the monthly bulletin Embouteillage informations, presented as the "Monthly Bulletin of the Institut National de l'Embouteillage and the Centre Technique International de l'Embouteillage": one of the first outlets for disseminating internationally the technical work shared by the INE and Cetie.

For in the meantime, building on its growing international reach, the INE had taken a decisive step: on 3 June 1960, it created the Centre Technique International de l'Embouteillage et du Conditionnement (Cetie), an international non-profit association for which it provided the permanent secretariat. The founding Board already brought together 22 members from 9 countries.

For decades, the two structures operated in close partnership: Cetie coordinated the expert network and represented the sector internationally; the INE contributed to technical production and hosted the permanent secretariat. An arrangement that enabled considerable technical output, which, over time, would feed directly into the European standardisation system.

From the 1980s to 2003: From the BNIE to CN6, a standardisation architecture in evolution

While Cetie positioned itself from the outset as a producer of technical reference documents, its relationship with official standardisation took shape gradually.

In the mid-1980s, the INE's operational structure was accredited by the French public authorities as the Bureau de Normalisation des Industries de l'Embouteillage et du Conditionnement (BNIE), the national standardisation body for the sector, covering "the standardisation of individual retail containers, specific equipment and accessories in the field of bottles, flacons, cups and jars in all materials". The BNIE managed the national collection of some 73 standards listed under class H 35 (glass containers) of AFNOR.

At the same time, Cetie developed a liaison status with CEN (the European Committee for Standardisation), allowing it to participate as an observer in the work of Technical Committee TC 261 "Packaging", and in particular working group WG 21 "Glass Containers", attached to subcommittee SC 5. Many of its documents began serving as pre-normative references for the development of European standards. The Vienna Agreement of June 1991, concluded between ISO and CEN to avoid duplication of work, extended this influence to the international level: Cetie documents also fed into ISO technical committees, in particular TC 63 "Glass Containers".

"The importance of standards becomes apparent when they are absent. As industrialists, the issues associated with standardisation underline how important it is for industry to participate in this work, either individually or collectively through their professional associations such as, for example, Cetie."
Patrick Van Develde, Secretary General of Cetie, Liquides & Conditionnement

In early 2002, the INE merged into Cetie. This major development led to a reshaping of the national standardisation landscape: since the BNIE's supervisory status could not be transferred to Cetie given its international character, the BNIE accreditation was withdrawn (with the agreement of the organisation itself). To avoid leaving the sector's national representation within AFNOR vacant, a solution was found: in agreement with AFNOR, Cetie created in 2003 the Standardisation Commission CN 6 "Bottling Industries". Chaired by Cetie and managed by AFNOR, this commission was tasked with addressing technical matters related to the bottling industry, maintaining the national H 35 collection, and developing national standardisation work where needed, on the basis of draft documents prepared by Cetie. Its first meeting was held on 2 October 2003 at AFNOR's premises.

In June 2004, Cetie obtained from ISO a Category A liaison status with TC 63 (the most active level, involving an effective contribution to the work). The circle was complete: from the BNIE to CN 6, through CEN and ISO, Cetie had progressively built a standardisation architecture operating at three levels.

A deliberate positioning: upstream, not instead

What needs to be clearly understood is that none of this happened by chance; it reflects a clear strategic choice: Cetie does not publish official standards. It creates the conditions that make standards possible.

When an official standard is published (whether by CEN or ISO) based on a Cetie document, that document is withdrawn from free download. All requests are redirected to the official standard. No claim of authorship, no credit sought: the standard becomes the sole reference. This institutional selflessness is one of the reasons why Cetie is listened to and respected well beyond its own membership.

Today, Cetie maintains active liaisons with six CEN and ISO committees: from the geometry of glass neck finishes to tethered caps, through recyclability and reuse. Its approximately 200 documents are downloaded free of charge by more than 3,500 companies in 195 countries, representing around 20,000 downloads per year.

Post-Covid: continued output, the absence of in-person contact

The 2020 pandemic profoundly changed how Cetie's working groups operate. Since then, the vast majority of meetings have been held remotely (via Microsoft Teams, as the current expert group calendar demonstrates). This shift has allowed the pace of technical work to be maintained and even accelerated: experts from around the world connect without the constraints of travel, subgroups meet more frequently, and document production has not slowed; more than fifty documents are currently being drafted or revised.

It would be naive, however, not to acknowledge what remote working cannot replace. In-person meetings were also (and perhaps above all) the moment when trust was built between experts from different countries and companies. The informal exchanges over coffee, the corridor conversations, the sense of belonging to a shared professional community: all dimensions of human connection that do not translate easily through a shared screen. This is not a criticism of remote working, which has proven its effectiveness; it is simply an observation: something has changed in the texture of those exchanges. That is precisely why Cetie and its experts are committed to maintaining in-person meetings at least once a year, sometimes twice, so that the community remains a community.

2027: building on 75 years of collective memory

It is precisely in this context that the future wiki knowledge base will come into its own. Creating a tool that connects documents to their history (successive versions, meeting minutes, the technical discussions that led to each drafting choice), means recognising that the value of a technical document lies not only in its current content, but in the journey taken to get there.

For an expert joining a Cetie working group today, being able to trace a document back through time, understand why a neck finish was dimensioned in a certain way twenty years ago, identify who had raised a particular objection and how it was resolved: that is access to a form of collective industrial memory that very few organisations manage to preserve.

Cetie has that memory. It is now giving itself the means to pass it on.