French consumers buy nearly 20,000 tonnes of savon de Marseille a year, and eight out of 10 products sold under that name come from China, Malaysia, Indonesia or Tunisia. Yet the handful of makers still working in the Bouches-du-Rhône say they are being drowned out by a label that has become so loose it no longer guarantees where, or how, the soap was made.
Four historic soapworks grouped inside the Union des professionnels du savon de Marseille say they still make the product in cauldrons in the Bouches-du-Rhône using the Marseille method in five steps. Those companies — Marius Fabre in Salon-de-Provence, Fer à Cheval in Marseille, La Savonnerie du Midi in Marseille and Le Sérail in Marseille — all carry the state’s Entreprise du patrimoine vivant label. Their case is simple: if the name is to mean anything, it should point to a real craft, not a generic bar shipped from the other side of the world.
The numbers show why the fight matters now. Sales have climbed about 30% since the Covid-19 pandemic, turning savon de Marseille from a familiar household product into a booming market. Fer à Cheval, founded in 1856 and the oldest Marseille soapmaker still operating, sold 2.5 million products in 2024 and posted 6 million euros in revenue, with international sales accounting for 30% of the total. Its own brand makes up about 75% of group turnover, and the company’s revenue has risen 50% in five years.
Marius Fabre, founded in 1900, employs 38 people and has capital of 600,000 euros. Julie Bousquet-Fabre has run the company since 7 August 2020, while Marie Bousquet-Fabre oversees exports. At the other end of the market, the Savonnerie du Midi, founded in 1894 and bought by the Prodef group in 2013, has put 1.7 million euros into reviving five original cauldrons, underscoring how much the traditional makers have had to invest just to keep the old process alive.
The legal battle has been running for years. On 26 December 2017, the Association Savon de Marseille France filed an application with the INPI for a geographical indication covering the whole of France under number 17-005. The INPI’s chief executive rejected it for an incomplete specification, the Paris appeal court upheld that rejection on 22 November 2019, and the Court of Cassation confirmed the decision on 16 March 2022. The result is that savon de Marseille remains unprotected by a nationally recognized geographical indication.
That gap is exactly what the UPSM, created in September 2011, is trying to close with a tighter definition centered on the Bouches-du-Rhône. Its charter requires cauldron saponification under the five-step Marseille process, at most four raw materials, at least 72% vegetable oils, and no colorants, perfumes, preservatives, animal fat or additives. CERTIPAQ checks compliance, and the union has also filed a collective trademark and logo to help shoppers identify what it says is the real thing.
The tension is obvious: demand is rising, but the name is still open to products that have little to do with Marseille. Marie Bousquet-Fabre said, “Nous ressentons un fort engouement à l’étranger depuis plusieurs années,” and that enthusiasm is now doing double work — lifting sales for the historic soapmakers while making their name more attractive to copy. The next test is not whether consumers want the soap; it is whether France finally draws a line between a regional craft and a global label.
