American Glass City, China Glass Building

The “glass museum” costing US$30 million at the Toledo Museum of Art is a symbol of the “Glass City” of the United States and reflects the legacy of local glass makers.

Toledo Museum of Art
The "Glass Pavilion", which costs $30 million, is a symbol of this "Glass City" in the United States and reflects the legacy of local glass makers.

But what makes locals uncomfortable is that the glass used in the building has been imported from China, a new global glass industry.

Although the glass bending and laminating technology used in this 2006 contract was invented by local people in Toledo decades ago, no company in the United States has the ability to meet the cutting-edge architecture of this streamlined building. specification. The building has 360 thick glass plates, each up to 13.5 feet (1 foot equals 0.3048 meters), 8 feet wide, and weighing over 1300 pounds (1 pound equals to about 0.4536 kilograms).

More powerful challenges

Owens-Illinois, a Ohio bottle maker, said that it will retain key trade secrets in the Toledo suburban laboratories and that companies can use the "basic things" to succeed in China.

For many years, the West has been concerned with the failure of low-tech exporters such as Chinese apparel and furniture manufacturers. What has happened in the glass industry has seen a more powerful challenge that has come from cutting-edge, capital-intensive companies with high-tech expertise.

In industries where the center of global demand has shifted to China, such as steel and locomotives, such as turbines and special glass, this phenomenon is not uncommon. Those Chinese-funded enterprises that have fully benefited from the growth of the domestic market have bridged the gap opened up by decades of technological innovation in Western industrialized countries.

The Toledo “Glass Pavilion” project was led by China Aviation Sanxin Co. (Shenzhen Sanxin Co., Ltd., 002163.SZ) headquartered in Shenzhen, China. Bruce Tsin, deputy general manager of the company’s jeans and English-language construction magazine, said that the reason for getting this project is that the company is willing to invest funds to develop the technology needed for the complex glass. For example, there is a device worth $500,000. He said U.S. companies are too cautious. They are more willing to go through the standardization process and want to make more money.

And China has also acquired important technologies from foreign glass makers eager to enter the world’s largest market. Foreign-funded enterprises in China tend to balance some of their production secrets and products.

Ohio-based bottle maker Owens-Illinois Inc. intends to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few years to acquire companies or form joint ventures in China. L.Richard Crawford, the company’s president in charge of the global glass division, said that China is the world’s largest glass market. We feel that our market share in China is not enough; what we bring to the Chinese market is professional technology. .

The Owens-Illinois company also said that it will retain key trade secrets in the Toledo suburban laboratories, such as how to produce black glass and how to make wine bottles lighter than 30%. Crawford said that companies can use the "basic things" to succeed in China.

Nippon Sheet Glass Co. said in August that it will issue more than US$570 million in new shares, partly to raise US$53 million for the planned Tianjin Energy-saving glass production line. The company’s first store in Shanghai opened in July and has a tubular shape made up of 41-foot glass panels, all of which are made in China.

A hundred years ago in Toledo

According to Skrebeck, an industrial historian at Findlay University in Ohio, China was the United States in the 1980s and 1990s; Pittsburgh was the steel city, Akron was the rubber city, and Toledo was the glass city.

In the early stages of the development of the glass industry, the Northwestern region of Ohio in the United States has made great efforts to attract investment. In the late 1880s, the region convinced the eastern coast of glass, such as Edward Drummond Libbey, of cheap gas, land, and labor prices, including child labor as young as eight years old. The manufacturer relocated to the local area. Subsequently, the U.S. government passed customs duties to Europe's glass. By 1900 there were about 100 glass manufacturers in the Toledo region. Liby, who died in 1925, invested in the establishment of the Toledo Museum of Art.

Quentin R. Skrabec Jr., an industrial historian at the University of Findlay in Ohio, said that China was the United States in the 1980s and 1990s; Pittsburgh was the steel city and Akron was the rubber city. Toledo is a glass city.

Implemented by Ohio companies such as Owens-Illinois, Libbey-Owens-Ford Co., Owens Corning, and Libbey Inc. The production of light bulbs, bottles and flat glass was automated, and windows and commercial fiberglass were supplied for the Empire State Building.

For decades, the main business of Toledo was to provide glass to the rapidly growing automotive industry in nearby Detroit. In the 1920s, Libya-Owens-Ford's predecessor company improved the lamination process so that the windshield of the car would not be crushed. With the loss of the market share of American automakers to Japanese automakers in the 1980s, the glass manufacturing companies in Toledo were also implicated, making it difficult.

China's "Glass City" Shahe

China’s “Glass City” has a concrete cooling tower like a nuclear power plant, rather than the expensive equipment used by Western glass manufacturers to reduce pollutants such as nitric oxide. Every 15 minutes, glass produced in China is sufficient for a 100-story building.

Most of the world's flat glass comes from the float process line, which is a complex energy-intensive process in which the molten glass melts flat on the hot tin bath and continuously delivers hundreds of feet of glass while cooling. Float glass plant machines usually operate 24 hours a day for several years.

According to data from Glass Magazine, the United States has 33 float production lines, and Toledo owns two, which is operated by the Pilkinton branch, the largest glass manufacturer in the UK owned by Nippon Sheet Glass Co., Ltd.

At present, there are at least 150 float glass production lines in China. In the 1970s, China was still small in the glass industry, but the Chinese construction industry and the automotive industry developed rapidly. Since then, the demand for local glass has soared.

The basic ingredients of glass include silica sand and soda ash, which are almost everywhere. Because the glass is heavy and difficult to transport, it is usually produced close to the market. China's glass production accounts for 45% of the world's total, but its consumption is almost this number. Every 15 minutes, glass produced in China is sufficient for a 100-story building.

Only in a city in Shahe City, Hebei Province, there are 44 float glass production lines. Shahe’s flat glass production is about one-fifth of the country’s total production. Shahe City is located 265 miles southwest of Beijing (1 mile is approximately equal to 1.6093 km).

Liu Jujun, chairman of Hebei Daguangming Industrial Group and member of the Shahe CPPCC, recently launched a 820-foot-long float glass production line, not far from the same production line that was started last July.

China’s “Glass City” has a concrete cooling tower like a nuclear power plant, rather than the expensive equipment used by Western glass manufacturers to reduce pollutants such as nitric oxide. Liu Jujun said that 10% of his capital expenditure is spent on pollution control, which has reached all national standards and is now shifting to cleaner gas sources.

However, Liu Jujun's factory buildings are a bit sloppy and sloppy by western standards. It is run by an engineer sitting on a wooden bench. The dirty water from the nearby silo plant spilled onto the hot ground. Trucks on the Shahe Road carry a bag of synthetic soda ash, a chemical product that environmentalists forced the United States to prohibit from 1985.