There are products whose success and fame goes on to steal the limelight out of their inventors: the name of the product itself becomes way more famous than the name of the company that makes it. As an example: we all know and use plastic-hulled shotshells nowadays, and we all know rubber baton shotshells used by law enforcement for crowd control and other less lethal purposes, but not many know the name of the company behind their creation: S.A.P.L.

Established in 1983 with its current name (Société d'Application de Procédés Lefebvre – S.A.P.L.), the roots of the company’s history reach far deeper: tied to the history of the Lefebvre family, active in gunmaking for generations, with the patriarch of the family, Bernard Lefebvre, registered as a custom gunmaker in northern France as far back as in 1924.

In 1949 Jean Lefebvre (Bernard’s son) established his ammunition manufacturing company “La Cartoucherie Normande”. In 1951, La Cartoucherie Normande launched CARPLAST, the first 12 and 16 gauge shotshell to feature a hull and wad manufactured out of plastic instead of the then-common brass or waxed cardboard shell.

The first important foray of the Lefebvre family in the law enforcement equipment business came in 1979, when GIGN – the special tactics unit of the French National Gendarmerie – approached them to request a rubber baton ammunition to be used for crowd control and less-lethal takedown of suspects, similar to what the British military had invented and had been using for a decade in Northern Ireland.

But the French operators wanted the ammunition to be used on 12-gauge shotguns instead of 37mm launchers, making them smaller and thus less likely to cause collateral damages.

The result was the 12/50 SAPL, a 12-gauge shotshell with a shorter hull and propellant charge, loaded with a single round rubber baton or five smaller rubber pellets. Dubbed the GOMM-COGNE, those rubber bullets would later be used by the company to load 67 mm or 70 mm (2.¾”) 12-gauge shotshells for higher range and better effect.

The GOMM-COGNE rubber shotshells are still manufactured by SAPL today and are issued to police and military forces in France and fifty other Countries worldwide for crowd control and non-lethal takedowns, and are available on many civilian markets as a low-cost non-lethal home defense solution.

For the 12/50 GOMM-COGNE ammunition, many years ago SAPL developed with Chiappa (which produces them) a series of single or double shot, manual loading break-open "traumatic pistols". Dubbed the GC 27 and GC 54, they’re well known in Europe, they’re available for purchase and ownership without a license in some Countries (France included), and they can also be used for target shooting practices where the use of real ammunition would be dangerous or unpractical – eg. in one’s own backyard.

For this specific use, SAPL offers the Soft-Gomm six-shots revolver and its 8.8x10 SAPL round, similar to a slightly larger 6mm Flobert shell with a rubber bullet, offering very low levels of muzzle energy (4.5 J) that make it perfect for short-range indoor target shooting training.

Established as SAPL proper in 1983 by Jean Lefebvre’s son Jean-Pascal, the company launched its line of riot control polycarbonate shields in 1993, updated in 2016 with the launch of a high-resistance mirror-effect version, all of which are in service with the law enforcement and military forces in France and abroad. In 1995, SAPL first introduced the DBD/95 riot control flashbang, once again used in France and abroad.

Emilie Lefebvre, the niece of Jean Lefebvre, assumed the position of CEO for SAPL in 2016: by that time, the company was already offering a broad line of OC (pepper) and CS (tear gas) sprays for law enforcement as well as their own decontamination spray to soothe the effects of the above on officers and suspects.

At the same time, SAPL expanded its line of shotgun shells to include signal, blank, and tear gas cartridges, as well as aluminum slug shells and armor piercing shells to be used against barricades, reinforced doors, and engine blocks.

Always mindful of its origins as a gunsmithing atelier, under Emilie Lefebvre’s leadership SAPL launched the Custom-Silence Adamantium .22 Long Rifle bolt-action rifle in 2020, built around a CZ 457 action and featuring an integrally silenced, carbon-wrapped barrel of SAPL’s own design. IN 2021 the company has then launched a line of rimfire carbon-wrapped sound suppressors, and later a version of its own silencer design for centerfire hunting rifles, up to and including .30 caliber.