In the heart of Toledo’s Union Station is a 1950s-era Vitrolite glass mural headed by the words, “Toledo — Glass Center of the World.” For more than a century, glass powered Toledo’s identity and economy. Today, historic companies continue to pave the future for the industry through innovation and hard-earned grit.
You might not immediately recognize the name NSG Pilkington, but its legacy is both local and global. Its roots can be traced to the late 1890s with the Edward Ford Plate Glass Company, which made cost-effective glass for building skyscrapers. In 1930, it merged with Libbey-Owens to form the Libbey-Owens-Ford Company. In 1986, LOF merged with Pilkington. Finally, in 2006, Japan-based Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG) acquired Pilkington to integrate the manufacturer into their global network.
Today, this multibillion-dollar manufacturer has a major North American hub in the Toledo region, where it operates high-capacity float and solar glass lines. NSG Pilkington’s Rossford plant alone can melt over 1,100 tons of molten glass per day. Besides supplying architectural glass, they also manufacture products used for thin-film solar panels and other high-performance glass applications in automotive and creative industries.
There’s also a human side to the story. Many people migrated to Northwest Ohio in the late 1800s thanks to the abundance of glass-making resources and natural gas. Soon, glass-making businesses popped up all across the city, according to Kyle Sword, NSG Pilkington research and development director.
“[This] is the reason all these companies started here,” Sword said. “All of these innovators in this space all worked with each other.”
The company still embraces this collaborative mindset today. In 2023, NSG Pilkington joined other prominent companies and organizations in the region to form the Northwest Ohio Innovation Consortium, to embrace cross-sector collaboration.
“If we work together,” Sword said, “what could we do faster and cheaper together than any of us could do on our own? That’s the whole point of it.”
