China National Building Material to turn Hong Kong’s China Glass into global giant

China National Building Material Group, the world’s largest construction material maker and the nation’s sixth largest glass maker, aims to turn Hong Kong-listed China Glass into its platform for executing Beijing’s overhaul of China’s fragmented and troubled glass industry, according to a senior official.

The materials giant also wants China Glass to pursue overseas expansion through acquisitions and building new plants in western developed markets and emerging markets of nations along Beijing’s new Silk Road initiative , said CNBMG vice president and China Glass chairman Peng Shou.

“Our goal is for China Glass to become one of the world’s top three glass makers by capacity in three years, but its growth must strickly adhere to market-oriented principles,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “The plan is for it to add one overseas project per year.”

CNBMG – parent of Hong Kong-listed China National Building Material – in December last year became the largest shareholder of China Glass by buying shares from UK-based and Japanese-owned international glass maker Pilkington at HK$0.87 each, raising its stake to 23 per cent from 14.4 per cent.

Hony Investment, the private equity investment unit of Legend Holdings, has 22.8 per cent, while Pilikington retains 12.9 per cent.

Peng said over time, CNBMG aims to inject its glass operations into China Glass. Much of such operations were transferred or sold to CNBMG by various local governments to be restructured, such as Luoyang Glass which suffered years of losses.

“CNBMG has ample experience in industry restructuring and it will act as a consolidator in the glass industry,” Peng said. “CNBMG is the sixth largest glass maker, in the future we will use the China Glass platform to complete our industry consolidation task.”