Carglass

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

The company was founded in 1979 in Sweden by the Belgian 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.