Prior to this year’s Watches and Wonders, we had the opportunity to visit Yema’s manufacturing facility in Morteau France. Join us for an in-depth look into Yema’s facilities and the 3 manufacture calibers.
The secrets of the new Yema Watch Manufacturing Facility
Yema is a manufacture that is located in Morteau, France. Morteau is a border town of France that is about 2 hours drive from Geneva, Switzerland, and about 13km from Le Locle. Morteau is known for not only their sausages but for their watchmaking school where many celebrated watch makers such as Sylvain Pinaud, Remy Cools and Olivier Mory had their education.
Yema’s manufacture in Morteau have been renovated 2 years ago to facilitate and optimize their transition to an independent manufacture with in-house movements. This building is owned Ambre Group, a French family-owned watchmaking group who have been the owner of Yema since 2009. Right from the start, the Ambre Group had the ambition of building an in-house caliber. And after 4 years and 3 Million Euros later, the caliber MBP1000 was born. MBP1000 is Yema’s first in-house movement. This movement subsequently evolved to become the YEMA2000.
Since 2022, the Yema has since developed 3 additional in-house movements. The first movement is the CALIBRE MANUFACTURE MORTEAU (CMM) 10, essentially an evolution from the YEMA2000. It is an automatic movement with a full size self-winding rotor. A second caliber is the CMM.20, which is a micro rotor automatic winding movement and finally CMM.30, a bridged tourbillon movement specially launched during Yema’s 75th anniversary. Both CMM.20 and CMM.30 are done in collaboration with Olivier Mory of BCP Tourbillons. This collaboration started with the CMM.10, where Oiivier is a consultant.
Manufacture Française
These new range of movement bears the Manufacture Française (French Manufacture) logo on the dial of the watch. The watches that are powered by these movement have their main plates and bridges manufactured by Yema’s manufacture in Morteau, France. The other components from the movements that are not produced by Yema, such as the regulating organ, mainspring, crystal etc, are supplied by their Swiss partners, all located within a 2 hour drive from Morteau. Even though the components are supplied by their Swiss partners, all T0-T4 processes are done in-house in Morteau to qualify for the Manufacture Française mark.
For reference: T0-T4 are jargons used in the watchmaking industry to describe the different stages of assembly.
- T0/ T-Zero refers to the pre-assembly of bridges, main-plates and small components.
- T1 refers to the assembly of the movement and final adjustments.
- T2 refers to casing the assembled movement with the dial, hands and placed into the case.
- T3 refers to attaching the bracelet or strap, and buckle to the watch, prepping the presentation box and warranty certificates.
- T4 refers to packing and shipping of the watch to the end client/retailer
CMM calibers
So many of you will be wondering, what’s unique about these movement? Well firstly, Yema’s manufacturing facility is the one which produces the main plate and the bridges of the movement. In order for them to do so, they have progressively invested in 3 CNC machines. Two with 5 axis and one with 3 axis.
Each of these bridges and main plate are cut from a single piece of unleaded brass, it takes around 16 minutes for the CNC machine to cut the brass to produce a main plate and 12 minutes for the bridges. The use of unleaded brass poses challenges for the Yema team as it is less rigid and can easily be deformed under the heat generated by the machine.
A fun fact for those individuals who are environmentally conscious, you will be glad to hear that all brass plates that are left over or unused is sold back to the supplier, which in turn will melted down to be reused. The oil that is used in the CNC machine is also reused for 5 years.
After the laborious process of cutting the main plates and bridges, all the parts are checked by the machinist via tools such as the micro-view with the ability to examine them 819 times magnification, to ensure that the dimensions and holes are in the right position for the process of T0 later on.
Right after the QC process, the oils on the surface of the bridges and main plates are removed. The surface is then smoothened by a friction finishing machine and then sand blasted to give it a smooth surface. After this step, the bridges and main plates are sent to one of their partners for galvanic coating. This can be done in various colours but most of Yema’s bridges and plates are black. The galvanic coating preserves the decorative micro blasting finish of the surface and prevents the brass from oxidising and forming a patina.
Once the movement is delivered back to Yema’s manufacture, the process of T0 begins by their inhouse watchmakers. Most of these watchmakers are graduates and interns from the Morteau watchmaking school. For the processes of T0 to T2, it is all done in the same workshop.
The next step is to perform the quality control process on the cased watches. With the CMM 10 and 20 movement watches are left on a winder to be observed for 3-4 days to ensure the accuracy of the movement is within tolerance. The CMM.30, being a tourbillon and targeted at chronometry, is observed for 5 days. These watches are tested in 5 different positions in this environment and after the 3-5 days, the watches are then observed again to ensure the timing falls between their tolerance for each movement.
In the meantime, the watch cases and bracelets, which are supplied by partners are polished and engraved. For all the CMM movements, the warranty cards that is supplied is also engraved in Morteau. In certain instances where the watches are supplied to Marine National or if there are any personalisation request, the engravers would work their magic to make their client’s request happen. The movements are then installed in the cases to complete the T2 process, and goes off to QC testing. On its return, the watch heads are attached to the bracelets which is the T3 processes.
Once the watches are done with the T3 processes, the watches are QC-ed again to ensure that the watches are flawless prior to T4. T4 is then done once a day after the stringent QC processes. Yema’s shipping agent would then pick up the parcels once a day and deliver their watches to their clients and retailers.
Aftersales
Now, many will ask what happens in the aftersales? Yes, Yema does their own repairs in Morteau and all parts are archived for at least 10 years to ensure one’s watch would last them for a lifetime.
From Left to Right: Stanley (Deployant), Christopher Bôle (Managing Director of Yema), Pascal Bôle (CEO of Ambre Group) and Anibal Martinez (Business Partner of Yema)
