Carglass

Carglass is a French commercial brand for car glass repair and replacement that belongs to the Belron group, a subsidiary of the Belgian-French D'Ieteren group.

Carglass

The company was founded in 1979 in Sweden by the Belgian-French Leroi family. This family had a wholesale business in car windows in Belgium. Carglass Nederland started its activities in 1982 with the takeover of wholesaler Mobielglas. The first own branch was started in Eindhoven, the second in Heerlen. Since 1987, Carglass has been part of the South African group Belron. The real breakthrough and greatest growth was achieved from 1989 when the number of branches, number of employees and turnover increased very quickly. At the end of the nineties, the company came back into Belgian hands when the car group D'Ieteren took over a majority of shares. The remaining shares are held by the Belgian investment group Cobepa. In 2016, Carglass started repairing minor car damage. In 2019, the company announced that it would stop this service, due to a disappointing number of reported car damage. At that time, Carglass offered this service in 24 branches, under the name Carmetics. Employees who worked in this branch were given a different position within the company as much as possible. An unknown number of people were dismissed. In 2020, Belron took over the automotive glass activities of car service chain A.T.U., the largest garage chain in Germany. Since then, Carglass has been providing car window repairs and replacements in the almost 600 A.T.U. sales outlets in Germany and Austria. In the same week, Belron announced that it would be reducing its services in France. It was negotiating the sale of Carglass Maison, for home car repairs, to the German holding company Mutares and HomeServe France, which is part of a British listed group of the same name.

Locations

Carglass is present in most European countries and throughout the world.^[1]

France

Carglass headquarters in the north of La Défense .

Carglass' headquarters are now located in France Courbevoie in Hauts-de-Seine, north of the La Défense business district.

Carglass had, at the end of December 2022, nearly 3000 employees, in more than 700 intervention centers^[2] and more than 350 workshop-vehicles.^[3][4]

The headquarters, in Courbevoie, also includes a car glass repair and replacement center, as well as the corporate repairer university. In 2014, Carglass created the first professional glass operator qualification certificate, recognized by automotive professionals.^[5]

Carglass' internal customer relations center is located at the Futuroscope Technopole in Poitiers, Vienne.^[6]

Since 2010, Carglass has invested in a CSR approach, promoting the repair of windshields instead of their replacement, recycling 100% of broken windshields and electrifying its fleet of workshop vehicles. The company is certified ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 and has obtained the Gold Ecovadis seal.^[7][8]

Ownership

Belron, the brand owner, has the following shareholders:^[9]

• D'Ieteren group
• Clayton, Dubilier & Rice
• Hellman & Friedman
• GIC
• BlackRock
• Management, employees and founding family.