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 Swisspacer turns Lengwil into its centre for research and development. The new Technology Centre underscores Switzerland’s strategic importance as a hub for innovation. With the new Technology Centre in Lengwil, Swisspacer will consolidate its validation and development infrastructure from April onwards and integrate it more closely with quality control. This shortens decision-making processes, increases process reliability and lays the foundation for bringing new products to market efficiently. At the same time, the Swiss headquarters is being strengthened as the company’s central hub for innovation.
The investment reflects Swisspacer’s ambition to lead innovation at the glazing edge - advancing new technologies and substantiating their performance through robust internal validation. As a specialist supplier of warm edge systems, the Swiss company has been developing spacer bar solutions for energy-efficient insulating glass units for over 25 years. In addition to spacer bars, the portfolio includes complementary technologies such as Swisspacer Air for pressure equalisation in insulating glass. Furthermore, Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) provide the basis for transparent product verification in an increasingly regulated market environment.
Expertise brought together at one site
A key step is the relocation of the existing R&D validation centre from Herzogenrath, Germany, to Lengwil, Switzerland. In addition, the existing quality control unit at the Swiss site is being further expanded. By bringing these capabilities together at its headquarters, Swisspacer is creating a central innovation hub. The closer integration of R&D and quality shortens decision-making processes and enables new products to be tested, validated and brought to market more efficiently.
Expectations for insulating glass edge components are rising, from technical performance to sustainability, longevity and transparent product documentation. Against this backdrop, close alignment between development and validation is becoming increasingly important.
“With the Technology Centre, we are strengthening our headquarters as a central hub for development and innovation,” says Matthias Bach, CEO of Swisspacer. “The consolidation of expertise and resources in Lengwil is a clear commitment to our Swiss roots and to a strong innovation pipeline”.
Expanded testing capabilities
A key focus of the expansion is to enable faster, well-founded evaluation of new materials and product solutions. “The enhanced testing and validation capabilities allow us to assess the properties and performance of new ideas, prototypes and finished products much faster. From innovative, internally designed tests to validation in accordance with normative standards, our R&D processes are being accelerated and strengthened, while quality continues to improve,” emphasises Marie Guin, Head of R&D at Swisspacer since 1st of March.
Previously, she served as Innovation Partner R&D and has shaped the company’s innovation work for several years; in her new role, she also assumes strategic responsibility for the Technology Centre. This reflects the strategic importance of research and development at Swisspacer as a key driver of innovation and market-oriented product solutions. Operational management of the Technology Center will be taken over by Dominik Göschl, who is adding this responsibility to his current role as Production Manager. He brings extensive experience in production and process optimisation at Swisspacer.
The close connection between the expansion and the further development of Swisspacer’s R&D organisation is also reflected in the strengthening of project management roles, particularly in materials engineering. “Above all, the Technology Centre improves the transition from material research to industrial implementation,” explains Loris Buliard, Project Leader Materials Engineering. “When development, validation and production work more closely together, iterations can be carried out more quickly and based on a shared data set”.
Swisspacer recently launched Swisspacer Ultimate | Nyxé, a new product generation that combines design excellence with sustainability. Further projects are currently underway. The expansion of the Technology Centre forms the foundation for the next stages of innovation: over the coming months, the capabilities for evaluating new materials will be systematically expanded – a crucial step towards bringing new solutions to market even more efficiently.
With Thiery, Swisspacer is strengthening the link between customer focus, innovation and market development.
On 1st of May, Julien Thiery will take over as Head of Marketing & Sales at Swisspacer. He succeeds Sarah Sattler, who has been responsible for this area until now and will take on a new role within the Saint-Gobain Group.
Thiery brings with him many years of experience from various roles within the Saint-Gobain Group. Since 2021, he has served as Marketing Director at Formula, where he was responsible for marketing, communications, innovation, digital and IT. Prior to this, he held positions including R&D engineer in the insulation sector and in business development for the Technical Insulation solutions.
 “Swisspacer has a strong market position and a clear innovation profile. I look forward to working with the team to further strengthen our customer focus and provide new impetus for market development,” says Julien Thiery.
According to CEO Matthias Bach, Thiery has exactly the right profile to bring customer proximity, innovation and market development even closer together at Swisspacer.
“We would like to sincerely thank Sarah Sattler for her strong commitment and for successfully driving key initiatives, particularly in the areas of digitalisation and growth. With Julien Thiery, we are consistently continuing the strategic development of marketing and sales at Swisspacer – with an even stronger focus on our customers’ needs and the aim of developing solutions that precisely meet their requirements and offer genuine added value. We are very much looking forward to working together,” said Matthias Bach.
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