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Compagnie de Saint-Gobain S.A. () is a French multinational corporation, founded in 1665 in Paris as the Manufacture royale de glaces de miroirs, and today headquartered on the outskirts of Paris, at La Défense and in Courbevoie. Originally a mirror Manufacturing, it also produces a variety of construction, high-performance, moderate-performance, lower-performance and other materials. Saint-Gobain is present in 76 countries and employs more than 170,000 people.
Colbert established, by letters patent, the public enterprise Manufacture royale de glaces de miroirs (, Royal Mirror-Glass Factory) in October 1665.[1] The company was created for a period of twenty years and would be financed in part by the state. The beneficiary and first director was the French financier Nicolas du Noyer, a Tax farm, Receveur général des tailles en la Généralité d'Orléans. Nicolas du Noyer had other financial irons in the fire. In 1666, a plea was brought against him and a partner requesting the dismantling of a tile factory they were constructing at Popincourt, Étampes. (Corpus Bibliographique Étampois: Arrests d'Ancien Régime on-line). Du Noyer married Marie Le Normand. Their son, Nicolas du Noyer, was treasurer to the Marechal of Flanders and Hainaut. who was granted a monopoly of making glass and mirror-glass for twenty years. The company had the informal name Compagnie du Noyer.
To compete with the Italian mirror industry, Colbert commissioned several Venetian glassworkers he had enticed to Paris to work for the company. The first unblemished mirrors were produced in 1666.Warren C. Scoville, Capitalism and French Glassmaking, 1640-1789 (University of California Publications in Economics) 2006:28. Soon the mirrors created in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, under the French company, began to rival those of Venice. The French company was capable of producing mirrors that were , which at the time, was considered impressive. Competition between France and the Venetians became so fierce that Venice considered it a crime for any glass artisan to leave and practice their trade elsewhere, especially in foreign territory. Nicolas du Noyer complained in writing that the Venetians were unwilling to impart the secrets of glassmaking to the French workers and that the company was hard-pressed to pay its expenses. Life in Paris proved distracting to the workers, and supplies of firewood to stoke the furnaces were dearer in the capital than elsewhere. In 1667, the glass-making was transferred to a small glass furnace already working at Tourlaville, near Cherbourg in Normandy, and the premises in Faubourg Saint-Antoine were devoted to glass-grinding and polishing the crude product.
Though the Compagnie du Noyer was reduced at times to importing Venetian glass and finishing it in France, by September 1672 the royal French manufacturer was on a sufficiently sound footing for the importation of glass to be forbidden to any of Louis' subjects, under any conditions.Scovill 2006:28. In 1678, the company produced the glass for the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
In 1683, the company's financial arrangement with the State was renewed for another two decades. However, in 1688 the rival Compagnie Thévart was created, also financed in part by the state. Compagnie Thévart used a new pouring process that allowed it to make plate glass mirrors measuring at least , much bigger than the that the Compagnie du Noyer could create.
The two companies competed for seven years, until 1695 when the economy slowed down and their technical and commercial rivalry became counterproductive. Under an order from the French government, the two companies were forced to merge, creating the Compagnie Plastier. A mirror factory in the village of Saint-Gobain in Picardie gave its name to the present company.
In 1702, Compagnie Plastier declared bankruptcy. A group of Franco-Swiss Protestant bankers rescued the collapsing company, changing the name to Compagnie Dagincourt. At the same time, the company was provided Royal charter which allowed it to maintain a legal monopoly in the glass-manufacturing industry up until the French Revolution (1789), despite fierce, sometimes violent, protests from free enterprise partisans.
In the 1820s, Saint-Gobain continued to function as it had under the Ancien Régime, manufacturing high-quality mirrors and glass for the luxury market. However, although in 1824, a new glass manufacturer was established in Commentry, France, and in 1837, several Belgian glass manufacturers were also founded. While Saint-Gobain continued to dominate the luxury high-quality mirror and glass markets, its newly created competitors focused their attention on making medium and low-quality products. The manufacture of products of such quality made mirrors and glass affordable for the masses. In response, the company extended its product line to include lower-quality glass and mirrors.
In 1830, just as Louis-Philippe became King of the newly restored French Monarchy,[3] Saint-Gobain was transformed into a Public Limited Company and became independent from the state for the first time.
While mirrors remained their primary business, Saint-Gobain began to diversify their product line to include glass panes for , roofs, and room dividers, thick mirrors, semi-thick glass for windows, laminated mirrors and glass, and finally embossed mirrors and windowpanes. Some of the more famous buildings that Saint-Gobain contributed to during that period were the Crystal Palace in London, Jardin des Plantes, the Grand Palais and adjacent Petit Palais in Paris, and the Milan Central railway station.
Saint-Gobain merged with another French glass and mirror manufacturer, Saint-Quirin, in the mid-19th century. After the merger, the company was able to gain control of 25% of European glass and mirror production (before, it had only controlled 10–15%). In response to growing international competition, the company began to establish up new manufacturing facilities in countries without any domestic manufacturers.
Saint-Gobain cast the glass blanks of some of the largest optical reflecting telescopes of the early 20th century, including the ground-breaking Hale telescope (online in 1908), the 61-inch (1.54 m) Bosque Alegre telescope built in 1912, for the Argentine National Observatory, directed by Charles D. Perrine, and 100 inch (2.5 m) Hooker telescope (online 1917) at Mount Wilson Observatory (United States), and the Plaskett telescope (online in 1918) at Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (Canada).
By the end of the 19th century, Saint-Gobain named the Casa Pellandini “its sole representative and exclusive depositary throughout the Mexican Republic."
In 1920, Saint-Gobain extended its businesses to fibreglass manufacturing. Fibreglass was being used to create insulation, industrial textiles, and building reinforcements. In 1937, the company founded Isover, a subsidiary fibreglass insulation manufacturer.
During this period, the company developed three new glassmaking techniques and processes; first, a dipping technique used to coat car windows, which prevented the glass from shattering in the event of an accident. As a result of that technique, 10% of Saint-Gobain's 1920 sales came from the car industry, and 28% in 1930. Second, a few years later, another technique was developed that allowed glass to be shaped and bent. Finally, a process was developed to coat glass with aluminum, allowing it to be used as a conductor, and allowed the company to create products such as the ‘radiavers’ (French for “radiating glass”), a unique type of electric heater with the heating element encased in glass.
Glass and fibreglass sales benefited from the booming construction industry and the rise in mass consumption after the Second World War. Saint-Gobain's yearly glass production went from in 1950 to in 1969. In 1950, fibreglass only represented 4% of the company's turnover, but by 1969, this had grown to 20%.
Domestic sales in France accounted for only a fifth of the company's revenue. Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium were also important markets.
In 1968, Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel, a French industrial group, made a hostile takeover bid for Saint-Gobain. The company looked for a "white knight" to help fend off the bid. Multinational corporation Suez suggested that Saint-Gobain and Pont-à-Mousson (another French industrial group) should merge, to maintain independence from Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel. After the merger, Saint-Gobain-Pont-à-Mousson, later known simply by the name "Saint-Gobain", produced pipes in addition to glass and fibreglass.
In 1981 and 1982, ten of France's top-performing companies were nationalized by the socialist party-controlled Fifth Republic of France. By February 1982, Saint-Gobain was officially controlled by the state. However, the company did not last long as a government-owned corporation; it was re-privatized in 1987.
Under Beffa, the company continued to expand internationally, setting up foreign factories, and acquiring many of its foreign competitors. In 1996 the company bought Poliet (the French building and construction distribution group) and its subsidiaries, such as Point P. and Lapeyre. This expanded Saint-Gobain's product line into construction materials and their distribution. In 2005, Commercy took the helm of Supply Chain Operations, quickly modernising the company's lengthy and dated processes. In October 2022, Saint-Gobain Films & Fabrics was renamed Saint-Gobain Composite Solutions.. In 2023, the company's Indian arm acquired Twiga Fiberglass, a manufacturer of glass wool with production facilities located near Delhi and Mumbai..
On 1 March 2023, the UK business was divested and sold to Stark Group.
The Construction Products division employs 45,000 people worldwide and in 2006 had sales revenues of 10.9 billion euros.
Companies:
This division is divided in two parts:
In November 2006, Saint Gobain announced a JV, Avancis, with Shell to produce PV modules based on CIS film technology. Three years later, the company acquired total ownership of Avancis from Shell, and its two plants in Germany manufacturing thin CIS film modules for some time, it was sold to China National Building Materials Group Corporation (CNBM) in 2014.
The company has also sold off various assets. Recently, the company sold its cosmetic glass manufacturing business, including a plant in Newton County, Georgia, United States. In 2021, the company acquired GCP Applied Technologies. GCP and Saint-Gobain's CHRYSO were joined into the new Construction Chemicals division.
Gyproc products have been used on some of the largest projects in the region, including the stations and main depot for Dubai Metro; Atlantis Hotel – Palm Jumeirah, Capital Gate – Abu Dhabi, Ferrari Experience – Abu Dhabi and Masdar Institute – Abu Dhabi.
Saint-Gobain started its venture in India in 1996 by acquiring a majority stake of Grindwell Norton. Later in 2000, it started its own glass manufacturing unit at Sriperumbudur. In June 2011, Saint Gobain Glass India acquired Sezal Glass float-line business, based in the state of Gujarat, India. The acquisition adds about 550 tons per day additional capacity, and the deal was inked at around US$150 million. In addition, Saint-Gobain Glass invested in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan in 2014, which adds another 950 tons of glass per day. And recently in 2018, Saint-Gobain again invested in Sriperumbudur with 950-ton capacity, which results in the production of 3850 tons of glass per day from India.
Saint-Gobain deliberately and intentionally constructed a bypass stack to thwart environmental inspections and avoid PFAS removal. Despite this flagrant violation of their permit they were allowed to continue to operate. Former state representative and environmental scientist Mindi Messmer has claimed links between exposure to Saint-Gobain’s PFAS emissions and kidney and renal pelvis cancer, testicular cancer, female breast cancer, prostate cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, cardiovascular impacts.
Saint Gobain is involved in multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits that are ongoing as of 2025. Its former company lawyer was terminated after he repeatedly urged "the company to do more to address contamination from their plants in Merrimack; Bennington, Vermont; and Hoosick Falls, N.Y".
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