Institution
Syndicat des Mérandiers de France
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. “ahn” and “an” are nasal vowels: say them through the nose, with no n. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.
The 30 French stave makers of this association work 1 step before the cooper, and in 2024 they made 37,252 cubic meters of merrain (the split oak staves a barrel is made from).
The house
The mérandiers buy the oak, split it into staves and season it. Their association was set up on June 10, 2016 and works alongside the coopers’ federation, with which it shares an office in Paris and most of its campaigns. Vincent Lefort was its president from 2018. On May 28, 2026 the general meeting elected Jérôme Laglasse, head of Laglasse France at Varize-Vaudoncourt, in the Moselle, and Vincent Lefort stayed on as vice-president.
The association’s 30 member companies made 37,252 cubic meters of staves in 2024, for 187 million euros of revenue, and employ about 1,600 people. In July 2025 the association joined the Fédération Nationale du Bois. Much of its work is about access to French oak. In September 2020 it answered, with the rest of the oak trade, the Cattelot report on the French forest. The stave makers and the coopers protested in August 2023 at being left out once more of the talks on an amendment to the sector agreement on oak. At the general meeting of June 28, 2024, held at Maison Martell in Cognac, the members heard that the price of oak had risen 57% since 2020.
At a glance
- Kind
- Institution
- Based in
- Paris
- Founded
- 2016
- Direction
- Jérôme Laglasse, president since May 2026; Vincent Lefort, vice-president
Sources
- Its own publications
- Syndicat des Mérandiers de France, communiqué on the new president, 2026; Syndicat des Mérandiers de France: Notre syndicat, Vincent Lefort élu président, 2018, La filière réagit au rapport Cattelot, 2020, Avenant à l’accord de filière Chêne, 2023, Assemblée générale, 2024, rapprochement avec la Fédération Nationale du Bois, 2025
Revised October 10, 2026. How I choose sources
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