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Meeting with high-end glass company brought the passengers to Owatonna
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The businesspeople who died in Thursday's plane crash at the Owatonna airport were on their way to visit one of the nation's premier makers of high-quality glass products for architectural use.
Viracon Inc., the Owatonna maker of specialized commercial building windows, is a subsidiary of Apogee Enterprises Inc. of Bloomington.
The company buys plain glass windows and adds protective materials so they can be used in large commercial buildings. Viracon applies special coatings for energy efficiency, inserts plastic layers between the glass panels to protect against shattering and adds "silk screen" artistic designs, such as the four scenes on the windows of the Minneapolis Central Library.
"For high-end building projects, we have no U.S.-based competitors," said Mary Ann Jackson, an Apogee spokeswoman.
Apogee does not report Viracon's revenue separately, but Apogee's architectural business, which includes Viracon, accounted for $798.8 million of Apogee's $881.8 million in revenue in its last fiscal year.
A new product that Viracon introduced last year, CrystalGray exterior building glass, uses a special coating that bends light to keep out the hot rays of the sun in summer and hold in heat in winter. When the glass was announced, Viracon said the product took five years and more than $1 million to design, and was 20 percent more energy efficient than any of its other products.
In 2006, Viracon provided another type of insulating glass, called Solarscreen T VRE-59, for the rebuilt 52-story 7 World Trade Center in New York City.
Viracon has manufacturing plants in Owatonna, Atlanta and St. George, Utah.
STEVE ALEXANDER
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