Glass is a ubiquitous and versatile material. We can use glass to keep our buildings warm or cool, to make fully recyclable containers to store food and drink in, to engineer lightweight structural materials, or to create the links that our telecommunications age rely upon.
Glass manufacturing is dominated by a handful of major companies, such as the Asahi Glass Company (AGC), Guardian, Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG) Group, O-I, PPG, and Saint-Gobain. The industry has been subject to the sort of consolidation and rebranding experienced in other sectors. The most significant acquisition in recent years was the purchase of Pilkington by NSG in 2006, while rebranding saw Glaverbel relaunched as AGC Flat Glass Europe in 2007.
These major companies enjoyed mixed fortunes in 2007: for example, while AGC’s sales in its flat glass division rose by only 6.2%, PPG Industries enjoyed 14% growth for its optical segment and 10% for its glazing and fibre glass segments. In particular, the shine was taken off the results of several companies in the flat glass sector after they became embroiled in EU enquiries into alleged price fixing practices.
Glass products
There are 4 key market sectors: hollow glass (mostly containers), flat glass, fibres, and special glass. Global data on the output of these sectors is hard to come by. The body that represents European manufacturers, the Comité Permanent des Industrie du Verre Européennes, estimates that 61% of production (by volume) in the EU is due to containers, 29% flat glass, 4% tableware, 3% special glass and 2% fibres. Glass manufacturing is a major source of employment, with over 210,000 people working in the glass industry in the EU.
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