Date: 7 August 2010
Supported and concerned by all related sectors from both China and abroad, this event was successful and gained favourable comments from exhibitors and visitors.
This exhibition was staged in such a time when the global financial crisis is not completely over and the economic recover still has some twists. Owing to active financial policies implemented by the Chinese Government, China went out of the shadow of the financial crisis in a rather short period of time and became a motive force of the world economic development. In the meanwhile, China’s glass industry has obtained a fairly high increase and good economic benefits. As a result, China Glass has reached a new high in terms of its exhibition area (65,000 sqm), number of exhibitors (832), number of countries the exhibitors came from (26). China Glass still stands firmly at the second place among the large international glass exhibitions worldwide. As before, Germany, Italy, America and Belgium organized their State exhibitors groups to attend the show. Most of the leading glass companies in the world came to demonstrate their new technologies, new equipment and new products, especially those regarding low-carbon economy and new energy sources. Associated with the exhibition there were 12 technical seminars, which provided industrial insiders from the world over with a platform for technical exchanges and trade talks and for seeking cooperation partners. Statistics show there were 21233 professional visitors from more than 90 countries and the total flux of visitors is 44737 person-time.
“Low-carbon economy” and “new energy technique” are hot points of this exhibition
Shortage of natural sources, environment pollution and drastic increase of population are three tough problems of mankind at present. Governments of all countries in the world have paid great attention to such issues as environment, weather, low-carbon life, energy conservation and emission reduction, and also are making efforts to work out laws and policies related to energy saving and emission reducing. In this circumstance, “low-carbon economy” and “new energy” are embodies in the technologies and products displayed at the exhibition.
High demand for energy-saving glass, especially low-E coated glass stimulates the development of related technology, equipment and products. Examples are as follows. Saint Gobin Group: colourful solar-control low-E temperable coated glass, dual-functional solar-control and low-E coating glass, high-performance three-silver low-E coated glass, and special fire-proof glass. Asahi: solar-control coated glass, light gray highly-shading low-E coating glass. Bekaert: rotatable cathodes and sputter targets. Stewart Engineers: high performance pyrolytic coating technology of on-line glass coating system; reflective, low-E, solar control, PV-TCO, anti-reflective and self-cleaning hard coatings. The Shanghai North Glass Coating Technology Co., Ltd. successfully developed a commercially-operated magnetron sputtering coating equipment in 2008 for the first time in China. Moreover, nearly 20 companies at this show possess such equipment and technology.
Energy shortage also propels development and industrialization of new energy technology and the utilization of solar energy opens a broad land for glass industry. This event showcases a grand spectacle that many glass enterprises both from China and abroad are striding into the field of new-energy technology and developing solar-energy glass production. Besides low-iron glass, ultra-white solar-energy float glass and ultra-white rolling glass at the exhibition, one could also see TCO film as the major material of solar-energy film cells, PVB encapsulation material of solar-energy photovoltaic modules, sealants for solar glass panels, in addition to new technologies and equipment related to solar glass production, such as sputtering coaters for enhancing performance of solar-energy products, production lines for non-crystal and microcrystal silicon thin film solar panels, vacuum sputtering coating equipment for transparent and conductive glass. These products are produced not only in foreign countries, but also in China, such as Jinjing Group, China South Glass, China Triumph International Engineering.
“Made in China” attracts great numbers of enterprises and visitors
The reform and opening-up police of China is promoting development of the glass industry and have made China the largest country in the world in glass production and consumption. With the rise of manufacturing and equipment levels and the competition capacity of China’s glass industry, the export of Chinese-made complete sets of technology for float glass production has gained remarkable progress and these exhibits attracted 2090 visitors from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and developed countries in Europe and North America, accounting for 10% of the total number of the visitors, and some of them are new comers of the China Glass exhibition. Moreover, many renowned foreign manufacturers have set up solely-owned enterprises or joint ventures in China in recent years. Chinese glass enterprises have made notable progress in design and manufacturing technology, as well as outward appearance and quality of the major float glass and processed glass production equipment. As a result, most of the glass-processing machines one could see at the show are Chinese-made ones.
Technical highlights of this exhibition
The general trends of the present-day glass industry in the world can be summarized as follows. (1) New technology is widely applied to such five fields as energy, new material and biologic engineering; (2) Technology of float raw glass plates focuses on production of large-sized, ultra-thin, ultra-thick and highly transparent glass plates; (3) New glass products will have better modification features composition and surface, so as to possess excellent functions and wider applications; (4) Computer technique is used to rise and reform float glass production lines and corresponding techniques are developed for control and treatment of these production lines. All these development trends can be found at this glass show.
(1) Production and enhancing technique of ultra-large and ultra-white raw glass plates
Modern architecture requires larger and larger raw glass sheets. Some of the Chinese companies are capable of producing ultra-large float glass and commodity production of 12-15 mm-thick and 1200 mm-long raw glass sheets. 19 mm-thick and 49.5 sqm-sized ultra-large and ultra-while glass sheets are produced by China’s Jinjing Group. This is a largest one in the world and has been used in the Bird Nest and Water Cube for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, National Theater for Art Performance in Beijing, Solar Valley at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, Shanghai World Financial Centre--the first skyscraper in China and Burj Dubai--the tallest building in the world.
Besides large size, safety is also significant for modern buildings, which can be realized by means of tempering and laminating. An ultra-large (12.8 m long x 3.6 m wide x 15 mm thick) double-layered bent-tempering glass, displayed at the booth of the Luoyang North China, is a most interesting point. iPod in the US plans to replace all the glass of its headquarters in New York with large-sized three-layered bent-tempering glass sheets (18 m-long, 3.6 m wide and 13 mm-thick). This is a sever challenge to the China North Glass and even to the glass-processing technology in the world. It will again create a “made-in-China” brand.
(2) Brand-new tempering technology for ultra-thin glass
Another highlight at this show is the 2 mm-thick tempering glass in the booth of Lisec Shanghai Glass Group. It can be bent back and forth as paper. Such glass has high press-resistance and smoothness and is light-weighted and can be widely used in LED displays and solar photovoltaic industry due to extremely small thickness, high transparency and compact-resistance. This product provides more choices for engineers and designers in such industries as architecture, decoration, furniture and automobile. 
(3) Solutions for power generation with desulphurization and denitration of glass furnace flue gas
Power generation technique with waste heat from float glass furnaces is demonstrated in the exhibition. Such technique is relatively mature and will bring about high efficiency and low cost. More and more enterprises have employed this technology and gained fairly good benefits.
China Triumph International Engineering introduced their solution for this purpose. This technical solution is summarized as “furnace flue gas-desulphurization-electric dust collection-denitration-waste heat boiler-flue discharge”. It attracted a crowd of visitors of the exhibition.
China Glass 2011 will be staged in Shanghai in May next year. Over 80% of the exhibitors of this year’s show are intending to participate in the 2011 event.
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