In a conversation with Window & Façade Magazine, Dorian Bomble talked about the journey of Saint-Gobain, their products & and projects, vision about the industry, and so on. Here are the excerpts…
Saint-Gobain has been a pioneer in the construction and industrial sectors for a long period. Can you share the key milestones in the company’s journey that have shaped its leadership today?
- Saint-Gobain, founded in 1665, has a rich history of innovation and leadership in the construction and industrial sectors. Some key milestones that have shaped its journey include:
- Founding and Early Innovation (1665): Saint-Gobain was established by Louis XIV to produce glass for the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. This was its first major success, setting the stage for its innovation in glass manufacturing.
- Expansion into Industrial Glass (19th Century): In the 1800s, Saint-Gobain expanded beyond decorative glass, introducing industrial glass and mirrors, responding to the demands of modernisation across Europe.
- Global Expansion (20th Century): After establishing itself as a leader in Europe, Saint-Gobain began its global expansion, entering North America and Asia, which opened up new markets for its construction materials and technologies.
- Diversification (Late 20th Century): Saint-Gobain diversified its portfolio, moving beyond glass into high-performance materials, plastics, and construction solutions. The acquisition of companies like CertainTeed in the US bolstered its presence in building materials.
- Commitment to Sustainability (21st Century): In recent decades, Saint-Gobain has positioned itself at the forefront of sustainable construction, developing energy-efficient solutions and eco-friendly products, while committing to reduce its carbon footprint.
These milestones have solidified Saint-Gobain’s role as a leader in construction materials, continually evolving with technological advances and sustainability efforts to maintain its competitive edge in the industry.
The company’s vision is to become the worldwide leader in light and sustainable construction. What are the core strategies driving Saint-Gobain toward this goal?
Saint-Gobain’s vision to become the global leader in light and sustainable construction is powered by several key strategies. Central to this is the company’s commitment to innovation, with a focus on developing sustainable materials that reduce environmental impact, such as light, high-performance solutions that enhance energy efficiency and lower carbon emissions. A strong advocate for the circular economy, Saint-Gobain is also prioritising recycling and the reuse of materials, designing products that are easier to recycle at the end of their life cycle.
Digital transformation plays a pivotal role as well, with the integration of smart solutions and digital platforms that drive more efficient building designs and optimise material performance. In line with global sustainability efforts, the company produces solutions such as advanced insulation and glass solutions that contribute to lower energy consumption. Strategic partnerships and acquisitions further strengthen Saint-Gobain’s expertise in lightweight and sustainable construction.
Lastly, with a commitment to decarbonisation and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the company is reducing its operational footprint while helping customers meet their own sustainability goals. Together, these strategies position Saint-Gobain as a leader in the shift toward more responsible and sustainable construction practices worldwide.
With operations in 76 countries, how does Saint-Gobain ensure its global presence while remaining sensitive to local markets and needs?
Saint-Gobain ensures its global presence while remaining sensitive to local market needs through a multifaceted approach. The company adopts a decentralised structure, giving substantial autonomy to local management teams. This ensures a deep understanding of the specific market needs and customer expectations. Saint-Gobain also tailors its product offerings to the local context, developing sustainable solutions that address the unique challenges of each region.
Saint-Gobain’s solutions contribute to decarbonisation, resource preservation, and urbanisation challenges. Can you elaborate on the specific innovations the company is introducing to address these issues?
Saint-Gobain is committed to reducing the carbon footprint of both its own operations and the buildings that use its products. For example, Saint-Gobain has developed high-performance insulation materials that improve energy efficiency in buildings, helping to reduce heating and cooling energy consumption. These products contribute significantly to reducing CO2 emissions in urban environments.
To tackle resource preservation, Saint-Gobain is advancing circular economy initiatives by promoting the recycling of construction materials. One key innovation is the development of gypsum-based products that are recyclable at the end of their lifecycle, reducing waste and conserving raw materials. Additionally, Saint-Gobain is implementing low-carbon production processes in its manufacturing facilities, utilising renewable energy sources and optimising resource use to minimise environmental impact.
In addressing urbanisation challenges, Saint-Gobain is introducing lightweight construction solutions that simplify and accelerate the building process while reducing material use and energy consumption during transportation and assembly. These innovations are particularly beneficial for rapidly growing urban areas, helping to meet housing and infrastructure demands more sustainably. The company’s efforts also extend to developing solutions that improve air quality and urban biodiversity, contributing to more livable cities.
How does the Group’s purpose, “Making the World a Better Home,” influence day-to-day operations and long-term decision-making at Saint-Gobain?
The purpose explains the group’s existential core and sets the framework for strategy. MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER HOME is the powerful guiding thread that gives meaning to daily actions and also serves as a reference for long-term decisions. It directs the group’s investment and innovation choices towards solutions that provide customers with comfort, well-being, and performance while preserving the planet. It also guides the roadmap for operational excellence, ensuring that plants, distribution branches, and logistics centers are increasingly environmentally responsible and respectful of the health and safety of all employees and partners. Finally, the purpose reexamines and intensifies Saint-Gobain’s role in society, which is the roadmap for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) which goes beyond direct economic activity. The group’s exemplary role in the territories where it operates includes actions to promote employment and training in the communities, and the commitment of the teams within the Saint-Gobain Foundation, are all examples of how the group participates in building a fairer and more sustainable world.
Sustainability is a major focus in construction today. How does Saint-Gobain balance between sustainability, performance, and cost-effectiveness in its materials and services?
Saint-Gobain has a holistic approach enabling it to create value and well-being for both people and the planet, allowing the company to stay competitive in an evolving market where sustainability is increasingly prioritised.
This comprehensive approach integrates innovations, circular economy principles, and a focus on high-performance solutions. The company emphasises reducing the carbon footprint of its products across its entire lifecycle.
For example, it incorporates up to 90% recycled content in certain products like insulation materials, minimising the extraction of raw materials and energy use during production. Lightweight construction solutions, such as plasterboard and gypsum partitions, also play a key role by reducing the need for carbon-intensive materials like concrete, all while maintaining structural integrity and performance.
Saint-Gobain also ensures that its solutions offer direct energy savings in their use phase, such as high-performance glazing and insulation that enhance building energy efficiency. These efforts not only contribute to sustainability but also improve long-term cost-effectiveness by reducing energy consumption for clients. Through prefabrication methods, the company minimises waste on construction sites and leverages renewable materials supporting its commitment to decarbonisation and resource optimisation.
The world is rapidly urbanizing. How is Saint-Gobain contributing to the future of urban infrastructure in terms of sustainability and innovation?
As urbanization accelerates, Saint-Gobain is contributing to the future of urban infrastructure by focusing on sustainability and innovation. One key initiative is improving the recycled content in its products, which reduces the need for virgin raw materials and minimises resource depletion. By integrating recycled materials into the solutions, the company helps lessen the environmental strain that rapid urban growth places on existing resources.
Additionally, Saint-Gobain is promoting lightweight construction solutions, which lower the dead load of buildings. This reduces the need for carbon-intensive materials like concrete, helping to cut down on the overall carbon footprint of urban infrastructure. These innovations not only enhance the sustainability of new urban developments but also support the efficient and sustainable renovation of existing structures. Through these efforts, Saint-Gobain is playing a crucial role in creating resilient, sustainable cities for the future.
Renovation and light construction are key areas for Saint-Gobain’s growth. What are some of the most impactful solutions you are offering in these segments?
Renovations in the region are always critical. For malls, schools, healthcare, or hospitality projects time is the main constraint and we are focusing on developing solutions that provide fast and easy installation such as drywall partitions, lightweight tile adhesives, and decorative flooring solutions with very low cement content to minimise current and speed up drying. Some of those solutions also reduce the need for demolition making job sites cleaner and safer. And when there is demolition waste such as gypsum, we collect and recycle it in our Abu Dhabi plant.
Decarbonisation of the construction and industrial sectors is an urgent challenge. How is Saint-Gobain reducing its own carbon footprint, and what role does innovation play in this effort?
The first step is to reduce our direct emissions as much as possible. This is done worldwide through an ambitious number of industrial investments to improve our tool efficiency. This already led to the production of met zero glass and gypsum boards. For the remaining consumption, we are advancing our energy mix through partnerships with green energy providers. We are also progressively upgrading our staff company cars with hybrid cars.
Finally, one of the main pillars remains on the formulation and the solutions we are putting on the market. Through the years, we have developed the expertise of decarbonating our formulations thanks to our eco-innovation process.
Saint-Gobain emphasises continuous innovation. Could you provide insights into how your innovation process works and what future technologies we can expect to see from the company?
Research and Innovation are at the heart of Saint-Gobain’s strategy. The Group’s research focuses both on breakthrough innovations and on continuously improving its products, processes, and services in a spirit of openness and attentiveness to customer needs.
We support our customers technically daily, and this provides us with a great opportunity to watch their behavior, and pain points, and address them with new solutions. Globally, Saint-Gobain is also investing in pure R&D and regularly comes up with patents we can decide to implement locally. What comes next is more lightweight solutions for the whole building, helping to decarbonise the construction industry without compromising on performances supported by more digital services to fast-track design, construction, and the end of life of projects.
Saint-Gobain has a strong focus on humanist values and social responsibility. How do you ensure that these values permeate the company’s global operations? For Saint-Gobain, Corporate Social Responsibility is a long-term commitment; it is a central part of its business model, which permeates all of its activities.
Our commitment, supported by the 6 pillars that underpin all our practices, is to make the Saint-Gobain group a company that changes along with the world.
The Group’s CSR pillars guide our actions to reduce the environmental, social, and societal impacts of our activities and solutions. These priority issues take into account the Group’s strategy, the materiality analysis, and the expectations of our stakeholders.
Our CSR commitments are based on our CSR roadmap and our ethical code: the Principles of Conduct and Action. Developing and distributing more sustainable solutions to create comfortable living spaces that ensure the well-being of individuals and society as a whole: are the foundations of our mission.
Looking ahead, what are the key challenges and opportunities you foresee for the construction industry, and how is Saint-Gobain preparing to address them?
Urban expansion in the “Global South” is predicted to boom so wider uptake of sustainable construction is a must. However, it is being hampered by a raft of obstacles from lax implementation of building codes to entrenched mindsets. Fortunately, attitudes are changing as are practices and processes. This surge in demand will intensify virgin raw material and energy demand for manufacturing, construction, and operation of the buildings and local energy infrastructure must be ready.
Another important challenge is that the current real estate is not resilient enough to sustain increases in temperatures, heavy rains, and other extreme climate episodes. Saint-Gobain will keep developing low embodied carbon solutions either thanks to their lightweight benefit and/or high recycling content formulations for both newly built and renovation markets where we have strong experience from European and American markets.
Finally, what message would you like to send to your customers and partners about Saint-Gobain’s future direction and its commitment to making the world a better, more sustainable place?
The group strategy is clear and well-defined, this is a message of stability and consistency our customers can rely on. Our sustainability roadmap is well-defined and well measured and we are in line with our mid-journey milestones. Saint-Gobain has been identified for many years as the leading architectural partner and I believe moving forward we should also become our main customer sustainable partner and help them reduce their carbon footprint thanks to our products, solutions, and all the knowledge we accumulated globally and locally over the years.
In the UAE, to solidify our presence and group strategy, we have our proof of concept in our energy-positive knowledge space called AL-MUNTADA. This 400 sqm space is LEED GOLD certified and has been built using our high-performing innovative and sustainable solutions and provides a space that is a forum for exchange, for learning, and also a showcase of all our solutions.
AL-MUNTADA is a prime example of our commitment to MAKING THE WORK A BETTER HOME.
