Laporte has also supplied equipment for nine previous Olympic Games,

"I concentrate all my energies on the clays and the traps," Laporte President Jean-Michel Laporte told insidethegames.

The clay targets made by Laporte have been in use this week here at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championships, where the company is an official gold sponsor. 

"All the tests have been done at the ISSF, we added something different for the top for Baku, now it is quite finished.

"It is an eco clay. We chose all natural resin,"

The clays are coloured fluorescent orange for greater visibility and also incorporate a special flash which explodes when a target has been hit, designed to make the competition easier to follow for spectators.

"When you shoot the clays they break well," Laporte explained.

It is expected that over 170,000 clays will be needed for competition at the Olympic Games in Paris.

An even greater number have been used here in Baku where Olympic quota places have been on offer in skeet and today in men's and women's trap.

The company was founded in 1927 and developed equipment for what is known in France as "ball trap".

 Laporte has factories in Normandy and the South of France and a further factory at Bottesford in Nottinghamshire, England.

The daily output of each factory is well in excess of one million clays and annual production across their factories can approach 400 million.

An individual elite shooter at Olympic level can expect to shoot more than 150,000 targets per year.

Laporte first provided equipment to the 1960 Rome Olympics and was also the supplier for the 1964 Games in Tokyo, Montreal 1976 Moscow 1980 and every Olympics since Athens 2004.

They were also suppliers for the Commonwealth Games at Glasgow 2014 and the Gold Coast in 2018 when shooting events were held in Brisbane.