Saint-Gobain acquires Glass Service to enhance its digital solutions portfolio

2024-01-15

Jan. 15, 2024 - Saint-Gobain has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Glass Service a.s., a leading provider of digital solutions for glass furnaces, including advanced control systems and simulation software, which enables customers to reduce their energy consumption. 

Closing of the transaction is subject to antitrust approvals and is expected by the end of the first half of 2024. 

It will complement Saint-Gobain’s range of digital services offering predictive, diagnostic, and data-driven solutions to improve energy efficiency for its customers and reduce the carbon footprint of their products and processes: 

Saint-Gobain recently invested in 3 start-ups for breakthrough innovation through its venture arm NOVA: Sysdyne Technologies to enhance productivity and traceability for ready-mix concrete production and delivery thanks to a cloud-native software platform, and Plantformance and Newboot to improve manufacturing performance thanks to a comprehensive suite of services and software programs as well as real-time data collection. These partnerships enable Saint-Gobain to integrate cutting-edge technologies, such as IoT (Internet of Things), artificial intelligence (AI), and digital twins which can result in a reduction of up to 10% in a factory’s energy consumption. 

Since its acquisition of GCP in October 2022, Saint-Gobain owns and operates VERIFI® in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific: a concrete management system which leverages IoT technology to ensure consistent quality and sustainability in ready-mix concrete production and delivery. 

In addition, the SOLU+ and CAP RENOV digital tools sold by Saint-Gobain’s merchanting businesses in France (Point.P in particular) continue to see growing success with trade professionals and renovation companies with about 90% of worksites eligible for MaPrimeRénov’ having used the CAP RENOV advisory, layout and estimation tool in 2023. 

These digital solutions contribute to the goals of Saint-Gobain's “Grow & Impact” strategic plan aiming to provide end-to-end solutions to its customers and accelerate the decarbonization of their products and processes.