Lamberet Brand Guidelines: The Ain Refrigerated-Body Maker From Vonnas & Saint-Cyr-sur-Menthon

From Vonnas to the Teppes industrial zone.

Lamberet began as a body shop in Vonnas, a small town in the Ain department, in eastern France. Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire wrote in June 2012 that the company was created in 1935 by Marius Lamberet and was based in Vonnas before moving to Saint-Cyr-sur-Menthon in 1969. French Wikipedia gives a two-step version: Marius Lamberet set up his industrial body shop in 1935, and Paul Lamberet founded the Lamberet company in the same town in 1965. Both accounts agree on the 1969 move, which French Wikipedia places in the Teppes business park beside a main road, the old Route Nationale 79; the company kept offices in Vonnas.

The family ran the business for more than seventy years. L’argus summed up its ownership in May 2015 as the Lamberet family from 1935 to 2009, then the French group Caravelle, then the Chinese group AVIC. French Wikipedia says Philippe Lamberet, Paul’s son, took charge in 1990 at a difficult moment and pushed sales across Europe, with sales and workshop subsidiaries in Germany, Spain, Britain and Italy.

Growth also came through purchases. French Wikipedia says Lamberet bought its competitor Isomet at Sarreguemines, in Moselle, in 2000, and integrated Isomet GmbH of Saarbrücken in 2001. L’argus added that a German plant at Gross-Rohrheim came with the purchase of the German body builder Kerstner. Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire reported that by the early 2000s the company employed more than 1,000 people at its site in the Ain.

Insulated bodies from one to a hundred cubic metres.

Lamberet builds refrigerated bodies: the insulated boxes that carry food and other goods at a controlled temperature. French Wikipedia describes a range running from light commercial vehicles — vans, platform cabs and chassis — to rigid trucks and semi-trailers, and L’argus reported in 2015 that its catalogue covered refrigerated bodies from 1 to 100 cubic metres, organised by trade.

Several products mark its history. Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire credited the company’s growth to innovations such as the “cargofrigo,” which the paper described as the first self-supporting trailer launched in Europe. French Wikipedia dates the SR01 semi-trailer to 2000. L’argus reported that the SR2 Super City semi-trailer won a prize at the Hanover show in September 2014.

Hanover has been a recurring stage. In September 2022 Lyon Capitale reported that Lamberet won the “Smart Trailer” category of the Trailer Innovation Award at IAA Transportation in Hanover, judged by a jury of specialist journalists, for a voice-control system that operates the body’s functions in several languages. The paper said it was the group’s fourth win at that contest since 2010.

Production is spread across France and Germany. In 2015 L’argus listed four plants — Saint-Cyr-sur-Menthon, Vonnas, Sarreguemines and Gross-Rohrheim — and plans for a new one; French Wikipedia lists Saint-Eusèbe, in Saône-et-Loire, as a site since 2016. La Gazette France reported in October 2026 that the Sarreguemines site, known as Lamberet Isomet, designs and assembles custom refrigerated bodies for hauliers.

How trailer makers present themselves.

Truck trailer makers sell a product that spends its working life on the road, and much of their imagery starts there: a long semi-trailer seen side-on on a motorway, a curtainsider rounding a bend, a tipper on a building site. The trailer is often the largest flat surface in a fleet, so the maker’s own name tends to sit small, on a plate, a mudguard or the front wall, while the customer’s livery fills the sides.

Bodies set the look of each category. Refrigerated box trailers are usually shown in plain white, with a cooling unit on the front wall, because the panels are built to be clean and easy to brand. Curtainsiders carry printed fleet colours on their sliding sides. Tippers are shown with their steel or aluminium bodies raised, and low-loaders with a heavy load chained down.

Factory photography is the second register. Makers show lines of bare chassis waiting for axles, paint and coating halls, sandwich panels being bonded and finished trailers parked in rows outside the plant. Product names tend to be short codes or coined words that sort ranges by body type, which helps fleets order the same specification year after year.

The third register is the trade fair and the dealer yard. IAA Transportation in Hanover and similar shows give makers a stand where new chassis, lighter bodies and telematics are lined up for fleets and the trade press. Dealers, rental firms and used-trailer centres then carry the brand into regional markets, where the customer is usually a haulier, a fleet manager or a logistics buyer rather than a member of the public.

Two court procedures, two new owners.

Lamberet has been through the French courts twice. After the 2008 downturn, Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire reported, its order books emptied within months; in April 2009 the commercial court of Bourg-en-Bresse handed the business to the Caravelle group, and half the jobs at Saint-Cyr-sur-Menthon were cut. French Wikipedia, citing Les Échos, gives the sequence: court protection in October 2008, judicial liquidation on 27 February 2009, two Paris holding companies bidding for the business, and the award to Caravelle on 7 April 2009. L’argus described that takeover as following the liquidation of the former company, Lamberet Constructions Isothermes SA, and reported in 2015 that the company had since hired 80 people at its main plant and renewed its ranges.

In May 2015 Caravelle sold the company. L’argus reported that Xinfei France, a subsidiary of the Chinese aerospace and industrial group AVIC, had acquired 100 percent of the shares, and that the managing director stayed in place.

The second procedure came in 2026. On 2 July 2026 the economic activities court in Lyon placed Lamberet in redressement judiciaire, a French court-supervised restructuring, with a six-month observation period, Lyon Capitale reported; the company said production would continue and orders would be honoured, and the paper put its French workforce at more than 1,000. It reported that rising costs for materials and transport in 2025 had weighed on the company. In late October 2026 La Gazette France reported that seven bidders had come forward and that the order book ran to March 2027, with the outcome resting on the court’s review of the offers. Groupe Ecomedia reported on 21 October 2026 that the procedure had been opened at the company’s own request, and on 4 November 2026 La Gazette France wrote that the jobs were still waiting on the court’s decision; no buyer had been named by then. The same paper set the case against a weak market: citing the Observatoire du véhicule industriel, it said registrations of refrigerated truck bodies in France fell by 8.6 percent in the first eleven months of 2025.

For a design guide, Lamberet shows how a regional body builder can tie its identity to one technical promise: keeping goods cold. Compare Chereau, another French refrigerated-trailer maker, and Schmitz Cargobull, the German trailer maker. For this guide we use a cold navy, frost and an ice blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Lamberet’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.