A story that started in 1929…

Prosper Battentier, Carpenter of the century, and founder of the company.

Prosper Battentier started his company on the 1st January 1929 making roof timbers, joinery and stairs. At that time the art of building was based on learning by experience. Carpenters cut their timbers intuitively and at every step needed years of experience to appreciate whether their design was good.

Over time this method of working led carpenters to conceive and perfect well-adapted solutions for the different jobs that they were asked to do. Naturally the answers varied according to the era, the climate, the available wood and the social and religious context.

These carpenters from another age did not know about the resistance of materials and worked the wood with extra material. Awls, small blocks, struts, principal rafters, frames were the tools of their trade for these old craftsmen. Prosper Battentier was one of them.

Charles Jacob, forerunner to the manufacturrse of modern timber and wooden structures.

To other times, other methods. Carpentry adapted itself. After the last war, the imperative need to rebuild in sufficient numbers profoundly changed construction techniques. In 1965, industrialised roof trusses called “fermes-chevrons” by the old craftsmen appeared in France. This type of roof truss showed that with the same constraints and the same demands they used less wood compared to any other technique. The simplicity of the shapes and the repetition of the models were perfect for industrialisation

Charles Jacob, the successor to Prosper Battentier who died just 50 years ago on 13 July 1957, quickly understood this deep change in the carpentry trade. Himself a carpenter at heart, he used this technique whatever the situation and used it for the first time in the Nievre in 1968 in the construction of the “Inspection Academique de la Nievre”! The company Jacob-Battentier became , Jacob Structures Bois.

Between 1970 and 1993 more than 5000 roof trusses for private houses and numerous operations of high importance followed. They were real benchmarks in France for the size and degree of complexity regarding both public and private buildings. Among the most significant are the following:

Pascal Jacob, Charles’ son, took over the management of Jacob Structures Bois in 1993 and committed the development of the company exclusively towards the manufacture of industrialised roof trusses and the distribution of Kerto. Running parallel to this from 1984 to 1999 he developed ISB (Engineering wooden structures), his own research and engineering department specialising in roof trusses and well-known throughout the profession, especially for its publication of “Abaques ISB”, enormous encyclopaedias of wooden structure calculations.

In 1998, the Internet era led Pascal Jacob to develop Microsit Welcom and the site le-bois.com, which a few years later became the principal site for editorial, technical and standards content for the wood industry on the Web. The Jacob Group was born….

In 2003, the Group embarked on a new challenge: it created a new subsidiary POBI (Pre-fabricated Wooden Panels and Frames) and bought the last industrial site of the Pinault Bois et Materiaux Group situated in La Charite Sur Loire (France – Nievre, Burgundy) in order to develop the biggest manufacturing site of components for timber framed buildings in France (a production of 500 houses a year increasing to 1500 by 2010).

A prize-winner with Batinov (Bouyges) in the Concours National CQFD BORLOO organised in 2005 by the Minister of Housing and PUCA, The Jacob Group’s goal is to become, within 5 years, one of the European leaders in the manufacture of industrialised components for the construction of individual houses, social housing, professional premises and public and private collective buildings.

To reach this goal a new factory will be opened during 2008 with an investment of 12 million euros. This new site will bring to 20000 m2 the total covered production area of the Jacob Group and will be totally automated. It will be able to manufacture a housing cell of 90m2 living space every hour – that is 2300 houses per year. 213 jobs will be created between now and 2011.