Facilities

When it comes to sustainability, we don’t just talk the talk. Case in point: our own buildings.

SAGE headquarters and our brand new manufacturing facility in Faribault, Minn., are specifically designed to make our employees more comfortable, more productive and generally happier by letting sunlight stream in and providing a view to the outdoors for all employees. Both buildings incorporate abundant SageGlass as well as other energy-efficient products.

In addition to being green, our facilities are pristine. Our manufacturing processes require an environment as clean as a silicon chip plant, and we make sure that standard is never compromised.

While SAGE headquarters has been our home since 2004, the market’s enthusiasm for SageGlass has caused us to outgrow our current 60,000-square-foot building. We’re in the process of constructing a 324,000-square-foot (30,100-square-meter) high-volume manufacturing facility just next door that promises to be a game-changer in the green building market. This timelapse shows the construction that took place from February through the end of November 2011.

When complete (in 2012), the new facility will be the world’s largest and most advanced dynamic glass manufacturing plant (although our existing building does hold this distinction currently), able to produce SageGlass in high volumes and in large commercial architectural sizes at an affordable cost. We invested in the world’s best available manufacturing technologies to produce a dynamic glass product of uncompromising quality and reliability. The plant will house the world’s largest thin-film coating system for glass production.

We’re aiming for LEED Silver accreditation for our new facility. We’re sourcing as many local building materials as possible.An unusually large number of windows and skylights throughout both the offices and the manufacturing facility will provide natural daylight and offset the need for conventional electric lighting. The HVAC and chilled water systems will use natural cooling from outside air. An innovative hot water reclamation system will recycle heat back into the building. Waste- and rain-water reclamation systems will conserve water usage.  With these and other sustainable features, the energy performance of the new SAGE facility is projected to be 28 percent better than the ASHRAE 90.1 baseline – a key national energy standard for commercial buildings today.