Four consecutive years designing and building Pernod Ricard's presence at the world's leading travel retail show. The 2024 booth was measured at 11,300kg CO2e, with zero PVC, 100% FSC certified timber and nothing sent to landfill.
Pernod Ricard · Palais des Festivals · Cannes, France · 2022-2024 · Drinks and travel retail · Design; Production; Project Management
TFWA Cannes is where the global duty free and travel retail industry does its year's business, and Pernod Ricard's booth is the centre of its trading week. The brief ran wider than a single build. Over three years Pie Factory worked with Pernod Ricard Global Travel Retail and its in-house design team to create a Circular Making strategy for retail design, and developed an industry-first life cycle assessment tool to hold projects against it. The booth was where the strategy had to survive contact with a real trading floor: a space that hosts tastings, seminars, open mic sessions and evening events for four days, and then comes apart.
A booth built on Aluvision modular aluminium systems, so the structure is hired and returned rather than made and scrapped. Cladding and graphics were specified at 80 kilograms in total, 100% recyclable and entirely free of PVC. Timber elements were 100% FSC certified birch. Flooring used a reusable expo system. All furniture and planting was rented. Earlier years of the same programme brought in MAGNA Glaskeramik recycled glass, Altrock recycled marble at 87% reclaimed content, Buxkin recycled leather and living moss, establishing a palette the later builds drew on.
The calendar. TFWA falls in early October and the French construction and supply trade closes for most of August, which removes a month from the production window at exactly the point where design changes normally land. Every year the same squeeze: late creative decisions meeting a supply chain that is shut.
Then fire regulation. A booth in the Palais has to satisfy French fire safety requirements, and several of the most interesting circular materials are not tested for it. Substituting a recycled panel for a conventional one is a specification problem, a certification problem and a lead-time problem at the same time, and it is the reason most agencies do not attempt it.
The 2024 booth was measured at 11,300kg CO2e, with the footprint offset using gold standard carbon credits. 100% FSC certified timber, zero PVC, zero waste to landfill or incineration, and 100% of materials separable at end of life. On the 2022 booth, 67% of materials were responsibly sourced, meaning over 50% recycled content or FSC and PEFC certified, against 0% in 2019, and 84% were easily recyclable or 100% natural, against 9% in 2019. That build contained over 879 kilograms of reclaimed waste material.
Across the wider programme, the life cycle assessment tool Pie Factory developed has been used in the design, build and installation of 681 live projects, delivering a 51% reduction in carbon emissions and saving over 411 tonnes of CO2e.
Carbon scope covers embodied carbon of newly created materials, all logistics movements and production facility energy use. Indicative, calculated in house, not independently audited.
Aluvision modular aluminium. FSC certified birch. Reusable expo flooring. Zero-PVC recyclable fabric and cladding graphics. MAGNA Glaskeramik recycled glass. Altrock recycled marble. Buxkin recycled leather. Reclaimed pallet board. Living moss. Low VOC paint.