WORMS SAFETY is the first global alliance of quality management specialists in specific product categories that enables customers to meet their compliance goals, while managing risk and identifying disruption for growth through inspection, testing, auditing, certification, technical assistance, and training.
The pioneering heritage of Maison Worms stretches back over 170 years, encompassing influential leadership in energy, shipping, transport, finance, manufacturing, and more. WORMS SAFETY is a continuation of this legacy, delivering a long-term and innovative vision for safety and quality management.
The WORMS SAFETY alliance of industry-leading specialists and cutting-edge resource centers provides contributory, customized solutions involving three essentials: Compliance, Risk Management, and Disruption & Growth. Our experts continually work to raise global standards of quality through technological advancement efforts and placing the end users at the heart of everything they do.
Our core values include trust and integrity, ethical partnerships, corporate responsibility and sustainability, and a commitment to delivering world-class services and market-leading initiatives that meet the challenges of our clients.
Our Vision.
We take safety and quality further.
A customs-focused quality assurance regulatory system has led to standardized practices generating standardized results. WORMS SAFETY aims to go beyond the bare minimum required to meet market expectations, supporting our customers from the early stage of development right through to end consumer usage.
Our vision focuses on two main pillars: developing value-added solutions with the user at the center, and embracing cutting-edge technology to enrich our services.
USER-FOCUSED
Understanding the significance that product quality holds for consumers, WORMS SAFETY places consumers at the center of all our activities. The concept of quality means a lot more than simply well-made products. Quality is a far-reaching idea, incorporating familiar elements such as performance and functionality, as well as advanced criteria—such as comfort—and perceived quality.
In each of our services, the user is integral to a successful quality management strategy. This means securing a 360° strategic understanding of what consumers need and expect. For instance, consumer-led post defect analysis helps us to go further than simply identifying the cause of a failure.
Apart from working behind the scenes to manage safety and quality, we wish to educate and inform our clients’ consumers, who expect brand transparency more than ever before. For this purpose, WORMS SAFETY has created a consumer website where our experts provide accessible quality management information on their product categories:
TECHNOLOGY
WORMS SAFETY views technology and industrial applications as the most important methods to enhance our services. By supplying disruptive solutions to the quality management industry, we aim to deliver higher product performance, increased safety, greater user confidence, and a solid reputation for our clients.
To enrich our services, WORMS SAFETY leverages advanced digital systems, adding efficiency, precision, and flexibility to our activities. We are spearheading advanced testing and applied safety research, as well as developing new technological protocols and methodologies.
Our Mission.
WORMS SAFETY helps you to be compliant. But, for your business to flourish, you need to look beyond simply meeting compliance and quality standards. A successful venture should actively manage risks and benefits, and explore new business growth opportunities through safety and quality.
COMPLIANCE
The first stage of any compliance solution is to ensure respect for industry and market regulations. WORMS SAFETY provides clear and comprehensive guidance, so clients can understand and comply with the latest standards and legislations. Some of our experts are members of market regulation committees, allowing us to stay one step ahead of relevant statutes. For example, API has been a member of the AFNOR toys committee since 2005.
We verify the compliance of a product by conducting conformity assessments, while ensuring that all technical documentation sufficiently supports previously defined regulations. Furthermore, we help you gain the necessary certification mark or declaration required to trade in your target market.
RISK MANAGEMENT
WORMS SAFETY helps you to avoid the impact and cost of poor quality, and protect your brand’s reputation. For instance, the cost of rectifying a defect in the customer phase is five to twenty times greater than it is in the merchandise development or manufacturing phase.
The key to risk management is to have a proactive and preventative approach, focusing on identifying, prioritizing and eliminating potential sources of failure in your supply chain at the correct moment.
DISRUPTION & GROWTH
WORMS SAFETY’s experts, cutting-edge equipment, and technological resources allow us to identify opportunities for growth through safety and quality.
Each of our companies is a leader in their field of product expertise, helping our alliance to develop synergies and new practices across a variety of industries.
Our Values.
TRUST & INTEGRITY
WORMS SAFETY is firmly rooted in trust and integrity.
As pioneers in quality assurance, it’s vital that clients and consumers trust us to deliver unbeatable services with reliable reports.
We have created a leading ethics program, developed in collaboration with supply chain actors and Shearman & Sterling–one of the only renowned international law firms with 30 years’ experience in anti-corruption.
COMMITMENT
We are committed to raising global standards of quality.
Our expert specialists are dedicated to protecting consumers, reducing risk, and securing the reputation of our clients.
Our organization is committed to full corporate responsibility as well as maintaining a sustainable environment.
INNOVATIVE MINDSET
Our use of advanced technologies is an opportunity to establish new practices and improve customer competitiveness.
By engaging with clients and consumers, WORMS SAFETY lays the framework for new, market-leading initiatives.
We’ve been guided by an entrepreneurial spirit for 170 years, and today, just as it has always been, we want to contribute to creating tomorrow’s way of managing safety and quality.
Our Heritage.
WORMS SAFETY is a continuation of the family-owned Maison Worms, which has played a crucial role in some of the world’s most influential industries since 1848.
A 170-year legacy of excellence and responsibility is what motivates us today to usher in a continually improving approach to quality management.
“The diverse business lines of our Company are like strata laid down by successive generations as they have taken the helm of the House.”
Hypolite Worms, 1949, Worms & Cie
2000 – now
INSPECTION, TESTING, AUDITING, CERTIFICATION, TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE, TRAINING
Compliance
Risk Management
Disruption & Growth
From 2000–2006, Maison Worms participated in the development of the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company, Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS), gaining significant experience in the industry. Since 2006, WORMS SAFETY has been building an alliance of quality and risk management specialists with a focus on the needs of the end user. Our pioneering network of companies and resource centers uses technology to provide inspection, testing, auditing, certification, technical assistance, and training. WORMS SAFETY’s fields of expertise include industrial activities such as aerospace, health and services for consumer goods such as textiles and apparel, and household goods.
1930 – 1998
INDUSTRY
In 1973, Maison Worms became a shareholder of Saint Louis Sucre (a sugar group formed in 1831), and gradually took control during the 1980s, before its sale in 2001.
As a direct result of its financial and advisory activity, Maison Worms became involved in the development of numerous industry sectors. Several of its investments acquired during the interwar period rose within a few decades to rank Maison Worms among the 40 most prominent companies in France, while strengthening its international development. Examples of Maison Worms’ industrial investments include Saint Louis Sucre, one of France’s leading sugar producers, and the Arjo Wiggins Appleton paper manufacturing group.
1928 – 1997
BANKING, INSURANCE AND REAL ESTATE
Banque Worms
Founded in 1928, Maison Worms’ merchant bank, Banque Worms, provided growth opportunities and financing services to external companies as well as branches of its parent organization. In 1982, the institution was nationalized with all the other large French banks. After an initial stake in two insurance companies, in the 1990s it formed Athena Assurances, one of the leading insurance groups in France. Banque Worms financed turnkey factories and plants abroad, including Ciave; leased real estate in France; created Unibail, the European leader in shopping mall real estate; and founded Permal, an alternative asset management firm providing global investment opportunities.
1917 – 1966
SHIPBUILDING
The oil tanker Pluvoise was launched in 1955 by the National Navigation Company, which Maison Worms took control of in 1986.
Maison Worms created Chantiers Navals du Trait in Normandy during the First World War as a place to repair and renew its own ships. At the request of the French government, the shipyards were used in the reconstruction of the French merchant navy after the conflict. During their fifty years of existence, the shipyards built nearly 200 vessels for the French Navy and private European ship-owners. The garden city that Maison Worms founded in 1917 to accommodate the shipyards’ workforce counts among the most beautiful achievements of urbanization in France.
1856 – 1998
TRANSPORT
Maison Worms participated in the creation of Air France in 1932, and remained on its board of directors until 1984.
When Hypolite Worms needed to solve a transport issue while shipping British coal to customers in Europe, Maison Worms became a ship-owner in 1856. Quickly expanding its exports from coal to additional categories of goods, Maison Worms’ shipping lines operated between France and Northern Europe until the Second World War, and then in the Mediterranean until 1968. The maritime pole extended to long-range ocean navigation and then oil tankers. Maison Worms also participated in the reorganization of air transport, helping to found Air France in 1932, and engaged in ground freight logistics and the delivery of refrigerated goods across Europe.
Since 1848
SHIPPING AGENCY
Worms Maritime Services
Maison Worms was responsible for chartering the vessels needed to transport British coal to France, developing its own maritime services. Initially set up to support steamers in the Worms fleet, it soon expanded to the shipping companies that Maison Worms supplied with coal, culminating in an international trade and shipping agency at the forefront of European progress. Worms Maritime Services is the modern heir to the original venture, still active today in France (particularly in Marseille and Le Havre), Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, and Lebanon.
1848 – 1983
ENERGY
Port Said – coalition station – 1912
After working as a merchant banker in Paris from 1841, Hypolite Worms established Maison Worms in 1848, initially trading British coal. Within ten years, Maison Worms had become one of the first groups to specialize in the international trade of fuels through sizeable contracts with the French State and major European shipping and railway companies. Delivering the British coal that powered the mechanical dredges working on the Suez Canal prompted Maison Worms to open an operation facility in Port Said that contributed significantly to the group’s expansion. Important links with oil industry majors allowed Maison Worms to diversify into the sale of liquid and gaseous fuels, making Maison Worms a preeminent agent in the international trade of fuels for over a century.
