Glass has become one of the most common materials that are nowadays widely used in various of industries such as construction, transportation, electronics, medical, energy and homeware products etc, while the top 10 largest glass companies are dominating the global market and contributing immensely to the growth of the global glass industry. It is expected that global glass industry will continue its steady growth through 2020, this is mainly attributed to the rising demand in the downstream sectors which has been boosted by the rapid urbanization around the world.
This industry fact sheet is to assist industry professionals, investors, and people in general that are interested in gaining insights into the global glass and glass products industry including:
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According the recent market report listed on Research and Market, the global flat glass market size was valued at US$115.8 billion in 2019, and it is expected to reach $153.3 billion by 2024, representing an impressive CAGR of over 6.6% during the forecast period. The thriving construction industry around the world, which requires using glass for manufacturing windows, doors, mirrors etc, is the key factor driving the growth of the global glass market. Meanwhile, flat glass is widely used in photovoltaic modules or solar panels in the global solar energy industry. Due to the rising need for clean energy across the globe, the demand for glass is also like to spike in the near future.
The demand for flat glass in the automotive industry experienced a decline in 2019, mainly caused by the decline in automobile manufacturing sectors in major economies such as China, India, U.S., and Western Europe. However, this downturn is estimated to be structural and automotive production is expected to stabilize from 2020. Therefore, the demand for flat glass in automotive industry is expected to rebound.
Geographically, North America is the largest market for glass and glass products, accounting for revenue share of 17.9% in the global market of 2019. However, glass market in Asia Pacific is expected to witness some of the fastest growing rate of 7.1% CAGR from to 2027. The region, led by China and India, is set to experience construction and infrastructure boom in the coming years across its residential, non-residential, industrial, and infrastructural categories.
Saint-Gobain S.A. is a French multinational corporation, founded in 1665 in Paris. Its core business includes design, manufacture, and distribution of glass products for cars, home and office, and health and industrial applications. The company began as a mirror manufacturer, it is now one of the world’s top 10 largest glass companies, producing variety of glass and glass products for construction, industrial, automotive, and other sectors.
PPG Industries is a U.S.-based world’s leading supplier of Automotive Coatings, providing a full portfolio of products and services to all global automotive OEM companies. It also supply flat glass for automotive industry. In 2019, the company generated around 15.1 billion U.S. dollars of revenue, making it one of the largest glass manufacturers in the world.
Corning Incorporated is an American multinational company that specializes in specialty glass, ceramics, and related materials and technologies including advanced optics, primarily for industrial and scientific applications. It is one of the world’s largest industrial and technical glass companies. Corning is also the developer and manufacturer of Gorilla Glass, the glass used as screen for many smartphones.
AGC Inc, formerly Asahi Glass Co., Ltd., is a world’s leading glass manufacturing company headquartered in Tokyo Japan. It is the largest glass company in the world by market share. Today, it has over 55000 employees globally and extends into over 30 countries and regions with regional pillars in Japan/Asia, Europe and North & South America.
Kyocera Corporation is one of the world’s largest glass companies and leading producers of fine ceramics based in Japan. Kyocera’s glass and ceramic products are nowadays widely used in industrial and automotive components, semiconductor packages, electronic devices, solar power generating systems, printers, copiers and mobile phones.
Nippon Sheet Glass engages in the manufacture and sale of glass and glazing products. Its architectural business segment manufactures and sells flat glass, interior and external glazing products, and glass for the solar energy sector. The automotive segment supplies automotive glass for new vehicles and replacement markets. The technical glass segment manufactures and sells very thin glass for small displays, lenses, light guides for printers, and glass fiber products that includes battery separators and glass components for engine timing belts.
Guardian Industries is one of the world’s largest glass companies based in Michigan, United States. The company is well known for manufacturing float glass, fabricated glass products, fiberglass insulation and other building materials for commercial and residential construction and automotive industries.
Fuyao Glass Industry Group is a China-based glass company specialized in the manufacture and distribution of float glasses and flat glasses in automotive industry. The Company’s products portfolio consists of automobile glasses, such as coating glasses and others, which are applied in passenger cars, buses, limousines and others, and float glasses. The Company distributes its products within domestic markets and to overseas markets.
Founded in 1909 in Monterrey, Mexico, Vitro Glass is one of the world’s largest glass companies. With subsidiaries throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, Vitro produces, processes, distributes and markets a wide range of glass products. Vitro operates through over 30 subsidiaries across Mexico, United States, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama.
China Glass Holdings Limited (CNG) is China’s leading float glass and the major reflective glass manufacturer. It has a variety of products ranging from float glass, reflective glass, energy-saving glass, PV product to deep processed glass, etc. Its online reflective glass holds a large measure of market share. Its products are exported to more than 100 countries and regions, used in domestic and foreign landmark buildings
One of the major glass market trends that has been observed over the recent years is the rising application of smart glass. Smart glass is known as is a type of glass whose light transmission properties are altered when voltage, light, or heat is applied, meaning that the smart glass can automatically change its transparency according to the change of lights or other variables. Recent trend indicates rapid application of glass in building architecture that maximizes natural daylight through the usage of smart glass in facades and roofs. This is expected to play a key role in propelling product demand over the coming years. Moreover, innovations such as triple silver insulated low-e products are also becoming trendy. Low-e flat glass contribute to energy savings of a building and are likely to experience significant growth owing to rising requirement of energy-saving buildings across the globe.
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Over the course of six decades Leonardo Del Vecchio, an Italian entrepreneur who died in 2022, built Luxottica into the world’s largest maker of spectacles and sunglasses. In 2018 he merged his firm with Essilor, a French lens manufacturer, to create a Franco-Italian corporate giant that is today worth over $90bn and employs some 200,000 people. The group owns iconic eyewear labels from Ray-Ban to Oliver Peoples, and also produces glasses using the brands of European luxury houses such as Armani and Chanel. On February 14th the company reported that its sales grew by 7% last year, at constant exchange rates, faster than at many other luxury businesses.
Now Francesco Milleri, a close confidant of Mr Del Vecchio’s who was appointed chief executive of Luxottica in 2017 and of the combined group in 2020, is looking for the company’s next act. He has two big ideas. First is to become the leader in smart glasses. The ambition is not entirely new: the firm partnered with Google, a tech giant, on its Google Glass—an unambiguous flop thanks in part to its clunky interface and dorky design. The device was discontinued in 2015.
Yet there are plenty of optimists who think that the moment for smart spectacles has arrived. In 2021 Snap, a social-media firm, unveiled a pair of augmented-reality glasses. This month Apple began shipping its augmented-reality headset, the Vision Pro. It reportedly pre-sold 200,000 of the devices, despite a price tag of $3,499. “I believe we are at the dawn of a product revolution akin to what we saw in the early 90s in mobile phones,” reckons Luca Solca of Bernstein, a broker.
EssilorLuxottica’s latest foray into the technology is through Ray-Ban, in partnership with Meta, another tech giant. The first iteration it launched in 2021 had only modest success. It will be hoping that a new version it began selling in September, which has a snazzier camera and a longer battery life, will do better. The device can capture and relay what the wearer sees. An in-built virtual assistant can hear and respond to their requests.
Mr Milleri’s second idea is the one in which he seems most invested. “We have become a med-tech company,“ he declares. Central to that is the development of spectacles with built-in hearing aids, which it will launch in August, for those with moderate hearing loss. It reckons that is a group of some 1.25bn people worldwide, many of whom shy away from the perceived stigma and high price of conventional hearing aids. The company’s spectacles, by contrast, will look no different from other glasses and cost well below the price of a regular hearing aid, says Mr Milleri.
The thinking is not altogether original. The Beltone “Hear-N-See”, one such device, first debuted in 1956. Audiofon, a German maker of hearing aids, has also dabbled in spectacles. But the idea has never been adopted en masse. Mr Milleri is counting on better technology to change that. Last year his company acquired Nuance Hearing, an Israeli startup founded in 2015. Its technology uses an algorithm to detect where sounds are coming from based on when they are picked up by different microphones. The spectacles it has developed then isolate and process the voice of the person the wearer is speaking to and transmit it through tiny built-in speakers. Nothing goes in the wearer’s ear.
Mr Milleri’s enthusiasm for the concept is personal. Mr Del Vecchio, who was 87 when he died, suffered from hearing loss and often lamented that hearing aids were uncomfortable to wear with glasses. That inspired Mr Milleri and Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, one of the founder’s sons, who is also the firm’s strategy chief, to pursue the idea. Whether they prove to be farsighted remains to be seen. ■
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