Solaglas – the Future is Clear for Soft Coat Low-E

As one of the UK’s leading processors and distributors of glass and glazing products, Solaglas has chosen to embrace soft coat low-E products as a proactive move towards offering advanced technology products, which are also in line with the ever-increasing demands of Document L legislation. We asked MD, Alistair Higgins to tell us about his decision to use the SGG PLANITHERM range from Saint-Gobain Glass, his experience of soft coat low-E glass through the network and how he overcame the processing and handling requirements.

1. In your opinion, what have been the main drivers for the UK market moving more and more in favour of soft coat low-E glass?

Soft coat technology offers many advantages over the older hard coat technology, especially in terms of performance (U-value) and neutrality. The performance factor is increasing in importance and our customers prefer the glass to look almost like float glass, rather than have a brown or blue tint.

The UK market is following the same trends as on the continent, where in countries such as Austria, Benelux, Poland, Germany the low-E market is over 95% soft coat, and the Nordic countries, France and Spain are not far behind. This dominance of soft coat glass is due not only to legislation, but also to the better performance and appearance.

Reliability of supply and cost are also important factors - historically there have been issues with reliable hard coat supply in the UK. However, with soft coats we have every confidence in the supply chain, and with UK production of soft coat low-E glass to come on line in June, this can only lead to further improvements.

2. Your low-E products of choice are the SGG PLANITHERM family of products, from Saint-Gobain Glass. How does this benefit your business?

By using the advanced technology SGG PLANITHERM products we are able to positively differentiate ourselves in the market place. Solaglas only wants to use products that add value to the commercial proposition. These products certainly do that, which is no doubt why the SGG PLANITHERM family of products have already established themselves as the best selling low-E glass in Europe. This is a fact that the UK market is only now becoming aware of.

Saint-Gobain Glass is a leader in the low-E field and offers vast technical expertise and marketing support to assist us in developing sales of their products. We value this additional support. Also, with the investments they make in product development combined with their expertise in this arena, we can be confident that we will have access to the latest breakthrough developments in the field. This builds our competitive advantage over the majority of the competition in this aggressive market.

3. What changes have you made to your processing facilities in order to handle soft coat low-E glass?

Solaglas has recently made significant investment in terms of soft coat processing equipment and training for our people. The main area of equipment investment has been in relation to edge deletion of the coating. Research shows that not edge deleting increases the risk of failure of the unit due to secondary seal failure or corrosion of the silver layer of the coating. All soft coat glass currently contains this layer. We do not wish to pass such risk on to our customers or indeed risk the devaluation of our reputation.

We have also invested in washing equipment (soft brushes and de-mineralised water) and training for our employees on the correct handling and processing of soft coat low-E glass. The overall result is a generally improved manufacturing process, which leads to an overall improvement in product quality, across the board.

4. Have these changes been easy to manage?

In the early days, due to the fact that we were UK pioneers in the large scale processing of soft coat glass, we did have some issues with the change over. However, we are now comfortably and successfully processing the glass and passing on the benefits of the product to our customers.

Saint-Gobain Glass was very helpful during the transition phase, auditing our sites and providing technical expertise. They have also benefited from this process because they are now able to draw on their experiences with Solaglas to shorten the learning curve for their other UK customers. At first sight this may appear to be against Solaglas’ interests, but in fact I view it favourably because all such activity supports the proliferation of soft coat in the market. This is to the advantage of all processors.

Our main supplier, Saint-Gobain Glass UK, will be manufacturing the range of SGG PLANITHERM products from its Eggborough plant from June 2004.