Making the soft sell: Saint gobain’s new coated products and jumbo laminating line

Saint Gobain’s UK float furnace opened on 1st April 2000. Five years and more than 940,000 tonnes later, Saint Gobain Glass UK continues to innovate, and not only in products; the Eggborough plant runs an innovative cullet collection scheme whereby customers are offered above market rates.

The operational magnetron coating facility and soon to be completed laminating line will result in new products for the conservatory and architectural markets, while sales of the Planitherm family of low emmissivity glasses continue to rise. Planitherm Total 1.3 is a single stock product while Planitherm Futur N was specified for the Swiss Re energy saving skyscraper in London, also known as the Gherkin.

You recently announced one million square metres sales of Planitherm Total in the UK. Is this a big volume?

Guillerme Huguen: It’s a large volume and it’s a satisfactory volume for a product that we introduced just eight months ago.

We reached the one million square metre point in February, which means that in six months we convinced customers to switch to Planitherm Total and buy one million square metres of it.

Actually, sales are growing month on month. We know we’ll have more and more customers converting to Planitherm Futur N or Planitherm Total in the next two to four months.

It’s clear that hard coat sales have started to decline in this country. What we forecast about three years ago when we decided to invest in the coating plant, has happened. I would say the trend shifted from hard coats to soft coats at the back end of last year. The growth in the market has been picked up by Planitherm and the like.

Are these customers switching from other glass suppliers or just from other Saint Gobain products?

They are definitely transferring from Pilkington, Glaverbel and Guardian to Saint Gobain. We are growing our low-E market share month on month. We now have more than 35 independent customers buying Planitherm. Six months ago it was around half that figure. We know for sure that we’ll have more customers three or four months from now, including some very big players in the glass industry that are already committed to Planitherm. So these are definitely customers we are gaining from our competitors, mainly Pilkington of course.

Has machinery investment by glass processors been crucial to this change?

For sure. New legislation (Part L1) was implemented in the UK in April 2002. Certainly for a while, the whole industry has been wondering ‘Should I invest in soft coat capability?’.

I think now we have moved to another stage where most of the industry is convinced that Planitherm and the other soft coats will prevail shortly or are already starting to prevail. In volume soft coats are demanded less than hard coats but in terms of trends, I am sure that hard coat demand is going down and soft coat is going up steeply. The industry decided in 2003 to the beginning of 2004 that it is time to invest in new equipment.

The market is very price-led right now, and not prepared to pay more for higher performance.

The industry is under price pressure. Everybody is struggling to maintain their prices and profitability. This is one more reason why glass processors are switching to Planitherm, because soft coats are less costly to manufacture than hard coats. Saint Gobain has been manufacturing hard coats for decades. We have a hard coat low E in our range, EcoLogik, and we have produced millions of square metres of it over the last 10 years. This is a product we know very well, also in terms of manufacturing costs. For sure, soft coats cost less to manufacture than hard coats.

The product is better in terms of performance, appearance and at the end of the day it’s less costly, so it competes very effectively. Some big window manufacturers have decided to go with Planitherm because they can make money with it. They are under price pressure and they need to differentiate from their competitors, and the best way to do this is to offer a high end product.

It looks like the Window Energy Ratings (WERs) proposals will be included in the Part L2 recommendations. The current draft is saying it that doesn’t matter whether you have hard or soft coat in your windows, higher performance has to come from the window frame and other components. This must be a disappointment to you.

Firstly, let’s be cautious because we don’t know what the final version will be. Maybe it will say the solar factor should be taken into account, but we are confident that it will put more emphasis on the U-value. At the end of the day, the lower the U-value the better the product, and the better the insulation of your own window and your housing. So we are still confident that given the lower U-value of our products they will be very beneficial and very competitive purely in terms of performance.

We are still very confident that Planitherm is better in terms of energy saving than hard coats.

The other thing in our favour is that Planitherm just looks better than hard coats. The apperance is more neutral while hard coats look yellowish. This is one of our main arguments.

Germany is now switching to U-values of 1.0. Legislation does not ask for this value but there is a competition between window manufacturers who just want to offer a better product. I would say whatever the legislation, the British people will want to have the best product and the better insulating product in their houses, and it’s definitely Planitherm.

I understand you’re launching a domestic version of the Coolite facade glass for the conservatory roof market.

We’re going to launch two products: one is Coolite ST, which is available now and in stock at our Eggborough facility. This is has been sourced from Saint Gobain Spain for a few months but we’re now manufacturing it at Eggborough to better service our customers.

The other product we’re launching now is Bioclean Cool-lite ST, which is self-cleaning on one side and has a solar control coating on the other side. It’s a nice-looking product – clear and slightly blue in appearance.

Finished IG units tend to be branded as conservatory roof glass. Do you expect customers to re-brand your new products?

I’m aware that customers will freely use their own names and various combinations of components, and that’s fine.

SGG UK will soon have a laminating line at Eggborough. Is this to meet the growing demand of laminated toughened glass?

The line is not so much designed for specialty glasses. Laminated toughened glass is still a niche in the marketplace. The line is designed for mass production. It’s a high capacity, high productivity line.

Basically we pursued two targets: Firstly, to make jumbo sizes available. The industry is switching to soft coat low E, and is switching to jumbos with laminated glass.

At Saint Gobain we only manufacture laminated glass at Solaglas Sittingbourne in Kent but this facility cannot manufacture jumbo sizes. We want to make jumbos available for our customers in the UK.

Secondly, we want to be more efficient in supplying Planitherm laminated glass. That is why we now have both the coater and the laminating line at Eggborough. Once we have the line starting at the end of the year, the offer of Planitherm laminated glass will be more competitive than ever.

The Swisspacer warm edge spacer bar, Spider Glass glass fixings and the Lite-Wall glass assembly system are among the many products Saint Gobain offers. How many glass customers also use these products?

Swisspacer is becoming more popular in continental Europe – Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, and one of the biggest French window manufacturers has decided to only use Swisspacer. In fact we doubled capacity in the factory in Switzerland at the end of 2004, but we haven’t launched it in the UK. It’s been used in a few projects but the content of the new WERs will help us determine whether or not to launch here.

We are definitely focusing more on low-E glasses and glass for conservatories, and less on these products.

Tell me about Saint Gobain’s involvement in the Swiss Re project.

30 St Mary Axe, commissioned by Swiss Re, is a beautiful reference project – everyone knows it in this country, but only a few know it has been glazed with Saint Gobain glass. We recently had a meeting with a group of our biggest customers – what we call the Planitherm Club. We went to the 40th floor, which gave us a 360 degree view over London. The building has been glazed with Planitherm Futur N. This was just another opportunity to say it’s a safe great product, or Foster and Partners would not have specified it. Foster and Partners have been using Planitherm in this country and the rest of the world for years and years. Altogether the building is glazed with 26,000 square metres of Planitherm.

How has the energy surcharge been received?

The surcharge has been applied since November now, and it has been fully justified by the sharp increase in our own manufacturing costs. It seems to be working here and across Europe, just like it has been working for years now in the US. It’s very transparent because it is subject to the Brent Index and reviewed regularly.

In the beginning we had a few customers who complained about it but most glass processors have now applied their own energy surcharge to recover their initial costs. It’s well-accepted.

How are sales of Bioclean self-cleaning glass developing?

Sales are still at a low level but growing month on month. Our product is as efficient as the competition. I would say the optical quality is better, more neutral, than the competition. Saint Gobain Glass launched Bioclean later because we wanted to make sure our product meets with all our customers’ requirements in terms of handling, processing and glazing.

Our product also has to be used with some care, because the coating itself can be damaged by some silicones. That is why we provide technical support to customers who want to use Bioclean. But the list of products that are compatible with Bioclean is growing and we are working on a version of Bioclean with added protection.

How often are you in the UK and what are the ongoing problems you face?

Basically twice a month. Since we started our operations in Eggborough in 2000 Saint Gobain has been doing extremely well. No doubt we have suffered a bit since Guardian opened their float plant in Goole in December 2003 because prices have been going down in the UK. For a long time, the UK had the highest glass prices in Europe and now they are nearly the lowest.

It is one of my priorities to confirm SGG’s leadership in terms of innovation and attractiveness for glass processors. I am optimistic because of products like Planitherm which are doing extremely well, and we have new products which are due to come on-stream like Coolite ST and Bioclean. Customers have confirmed that they are very happy with our quality and service. They find it very easy to work with Saint Gobain Glass UK.