A presidential visit
On November 4th, French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited to the Placoplatre® site at Vaujours, in the Paris region, accompanied by the Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Land Management, Jean-Louis Borloo, and his Secretary of State, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.
Roundtable discussion on Grennelle Summit
Roundtable discussion on Grenelle Environmental Summit implementation
After visiting the plant's new plasterboard production line and the training centre, the President took part in a roundtable discussion on the implementation of measures decided at the Grenelle Environmental Summit. Pierre-André de Chalendar stated that, "The Grenelle Summit is an opportunity for Saint-Gobain in the construction sector - where the watchword is thermal insulation." In his conclusion, the President reasserted that the Environmental Summit's provisions are a "fantastic source of growth."."
New plasterboard production at Vaujours
The Placoplatre Vaujours siteThe Placoplatre® factory at Vaujours has just started up a new plasterboard production line, making it the world's largest gypsum processing plant with the fastest line in the Saint-Gobain group. This factory, which already puts out 25% of the French production, now has the largest capacity as well as even more energy-efficient plant and equipment.
A new training centre for tradesmen
The Isover Placo training workshopsWith a total surface area of 2,000 sq. m., the Vaujours training centre's facilities - classrooms, new solutions presentations and practical workshops - have been specially designed to accommodate training sessions for Placoplatre® and Saint-Gobain Isover.
Backed by more than 30 years' experience in training, Saint-Gobain is now setting its sights even higher, with the aim of steadily increasing its capacity so that it can train more than 5,000 building sector professionals every year between now and 2010. This is designed to raise building tradesmen's awareness of energy efficiency by training them to use and fit Placo® and Isover insulation solutions.
A new "energy efficiency" training programme has been set up based on the new requirements implemented following the Grenelle Environmental Summit designed to reduce CO2 emissions by 75%. This new training for professionals focuses on energy efficiency in new buildings and renovation projects. A module on "knowing how to sell energy efficient solutions" completes the programme's technical content.
With these moves, Saint-Gobain reasserts its commitment to making training facilities available on a regional basis with five centres due to be operational in France by 2009: Guipry (Rennes), Strasbourg, Vaujours and Chambéry in 2008 and Chemillé in 2009.
November 4th, 2008
