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Glaston sets medium-term strategic targets

Glaston’s Board of Directors has approved adjusted net sales and comparable return on capital employed (ROCE) targets and an extended target period for the strategic targets.

Since the previous strategy update in August 2021, there have been significant changes in the global economy and Glaston’s addressable markets started to soften in 2023. Due to these changes, the time for reaching the strategic targets has been modified to reflect the current expectations. Glaston has adjusted the timeframe for achieving the strategic targets from 2025 to the medium-term (3−5 years) except for the emissions reduction targets with a timeframe up to 2032.

Glaston has also slightly updated the net sales target and expects the annual average growth to exceed the addressable equipment markets’ growth. The updated target for comparable return on capital employed (ROCE) is above 16%. The target for the comparable operating margin (EBITA) of 10% remains unchanged.

Glaston estimates that in 2025, the Architectural markets in China and EMEA stayed flat at the previous year’s lower level, while they declined in Americas and the rest of APAC. The mobility market in China returned to a more normal level after a record year in 2024, and elsewhere stayed flat.

Glaston’s medium-term (3-5 years) strategic targets:

• Annual average net sales growth (CAGR) exceeding the addressable equipment markets growth
• Comparable operating margin (EBITA) of 10%
• Comparable return on capital employed (ROCE) of above 16%
• Customer satisfaction score (Net Promoter Score, NPS) above 40.
• Group-wide zero lost time accidents target, progress measured by lost time accidents per million working hours (LTIFR)
• Employee Engagement target above 75 (out of 100)
• GHG emissions reduction targets:
  • Reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 50.4% by 2032, compared to the 2022 base year (1,491 tCO₂e)
  • Reduce the scope 3 GHG emissions by 58.1% per square meter of sold machine processing capacity by FY2032 (emission intensity). Base year 2022: 0.00043 tCO₂/m²

CEO Miika Äppelqvist in the January-June 2026 report, published on October 28, 2026: 

“In the third quarter, the market environment remained cautious. Architectural-related investment remained weak across our main regions and customers continued to take a cautious approach to new capacity decisions. While customer activity slightly increased compared to the first half of the year, this did not yet translate into new equipment orders. In the US, weak architectural market indicators continued to weigh on customer confidence and investment decisions. The European markets remained subdued, although early signs of improving customer activity emerged in Central Europe. In the Mobility market, China continued to be the most active market, supported by the demand for advanced glass processing technologies. The market environment for Services remained resilient despite the weakness in new equipment investments. Demand for upgrades, spares parts and service work strengthened further, particularly in North America.

The different market dynamics across our regions and technologies were reflected in our third-quarter order intake. Orders received totaled EUR 42.2 million, the highest level so far this year, although still 3% below the comparison period. Order intake for Mobility, Display & Solar Technologies and Services continued to develop positively. Mobility machine orders more than doubled year-on-year and totaled EUR 10.5 million. This reflects our technological competitiveness in meeting the automotive industry’s evolving requirements for automation, production efficiency and optical quality. The majority of mobility orders in the third quarter originated from APAC. Driven by our strong commercial focus on Services, the business maintained its positive development, with orders increasing by 8% year-on-year, led by the Americas. Upgrade demand remained strong, supported by our focused commercial efforts and customers’ continued investments in improving the performance of their existing equipment.

The low order intake in the previous quarters affected net sales. With both segments performing below the level of the previous year, net sales were down by 30% and totaled EUR 39.8 million. Service’s net sales remained stable year-on-year, and represented 53% of total sales, highlighting its importance in our offering. Despite the significant decline in net sales, we maintained a comparable EBITA margin of 7.2%, corresponding to EUR 2.9 million. Our cost reduction measures during the past two years, the move of the Mobility, Display and Solar production from Switzerland to China, and the positive Services development helped mitigate the impact of lower equipment volumes, providing a stronger foundation for profitability as market conditions improve.

While the prolonged market weakness has weighed on our sales performance, we recognize that there is more we can do to strengthen our commercial execution and competitiveness. We are intensifying our focus on commercial excellence through targeted initiatives, more proactive customer engagement and a sharper focus on winning opportunities across our markets. Our objective is clear: to compete more effectively and capture opportunities even in a market that remains challenging.

Glasstec, held every two years in Düsseldorf in October, is the glass processing industry’s leading trade fair and an important platform for our commercial activities. At the event, we introduced new products across our tempering, insulating glass, and laminating technologies. We also launched new automation solutions designed to improve the productivity and efficiency of customers’ existing production facilities. These launches support our growth ambitions by strengthening our offering to existing customers and expanding our reach to new customers, particularly in the mid-market segment. Despite the uncertainties in the global business environment, customer discussions indicated cautious signs of improving activity, with some longer term projects in the EMEA region that are now expected to move forward.

Looking towards the end of the year, we continue to see slightly improving customer activity. At the same time, the uncertain business environment is having an impact, with the delivery of some customer projects in the Middle East expected to be delayed. For order intake, the third quarter marked our strongest so far this year, and our ambition is clear: to make the fourth quarter order intake even stronger. With an increasing number of active customer opportunities and intensified commercial efforts across our businesses, we are fully focused on converting this momentum into orders and finishing the year on a positive note.”

Glaston Corporation develops, manufactures, sells and services glass processing machines, equipment, upgrades and technology to glass processors in the architectural, mobility and solar industries.

Glaston’s operations are divided into three Business Functions: Market Areas, Solutions & Operations and Services.   

Market Areas

The market areas operate at the customer interface and, in close cooperation with the two other business functions, manage the sale of machines and services and lead the regional service functions.

Solutions & Operations

The Solutions & Operations business function is globally responsible for production operations, sourcing and supply chain. Production of Glaston technologies is located in Tampere, Finland, Neuhausen, Germany, and Tianjin, China.

Services

Services leads the global lifecycle business, services development, pricing, spare part operations, demand planning and warehousing .

Glaston offers a technically advanced and wide range of heat treatment machines, maintenance, upgrade, and modernization services, as well as spare parts for glass tempering and laminating.

Energy efficiency and the need to improve the energy performance of buildings is gaining more importance in the market and drives the demand for insulating glass.  Glaston offers high-technology machines for the production of insulating glass, as well as maintenance, upgrade, and modernization services and spare parts.

For the mobility market, Glaston offers pre-processing and heat treatment technologies and these enable cutting and grinding the glass into the correct shape, to bend, temper or bend-temper the glass into its final form used in different applications. Also, related service business is included in the offering.

Glaston’s offering also includes products for the heat treatment of solar panel glass.

More information about our products is available in the Offering section.

Glaston is a frontrunner in its field, and known in the glass industry for its technology leadership and high quality. Our position is particularly strong in developing technologically demanding products. Glaston carries out product development in close cooperation with its customers and partners, such as research institutes, universities and other higher education institutions.

The most advanced glass processing machines developed by Glaston have risen to the status of standards in many countries. We hold patents for all of our key solutions.

The main themes of our product development are projects and innovations related to glass processing and robotics that facilitate the transition towards fully automated glass processing.

One of our latest innovations is the tempering process Autopilot, which is based on the same solutions that are used in autonomous passenger cars. Autopilot presages a huge change for the entire glass processing industry, as it minimizes the need for machine operator input and offers process control without parameters.

In 2024, development of new features for existing machines to enable the production of new products and to increase productivity, continued. Also, the development of new retrofit solutions for improved performance for existing machines continued.

Features for online quality monitoring during the production process were also one of the key focus areas in product development.

In 2025, research and product development expenditure amounted to 3.9 (4.7)% of net sales.

More information about our major technology innovations here.