Oldcastle Glass^® Introduces StormGlass™

Santa Monica, CA. – June 24, 2003 – Oldcastle Glass^® North America’s largest independent provider of architectural glass products and services, announces a major innovation in hurricane impact-resistant glazing with its new laminated, high performance product StormGlass™.

“StormGlass™ has been developed to resist very high design pressures for large glazed openings in both the residential and commercial building markets. With its unique, exclusive composite interlayer, StormGlass™ provides architects and designers with the flexibility of using large glass sizes while satisfying hurricane-related building code requirements,” said Ted Hathaway, Chief Executive Officer.

With its advanced interlayer technology, which is the thinnest of its kind available in the hurricane impact glazing market, StormGlass™ features very high elastic modulus together with improved adhesion to glass. These components make StormGlass™ one of the best performing and reliable products affording the highest levels of protection without compromising the optical quality of the glass.

To demonstrate the exceptional performance of StormGlass™, two independent testing labs in Florida subjected several window units to high wind pressures at 80 psf (pounds/square foot) and 107 psf. The 40 square foot units, featuring both non-captured and captured glazing systems, met the design pressures as required by the extreme wind zones of South Florida. While providing this capability to withstand up to 140 mph wind speeds in the most severely impacted areas, StormGlass™ provides other “at risk” regions with similar protection in readily available supply at cost-competitive rates. These areas are concentrated from the Texas Panhandle and Gulf Coast states, along the East Coast of Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard (including the Mid-Atlantic States, Long Island, New York, and the New England States).

The introduction of StormGlass™ answers the needs of a variety of market segments. It opens up new design and construction possibilities while providing a greater opportunity to save lives and property by reducing the risk in affected areas from high-speed projectiles generated by hurricane force winds. These advantages are complemented by the fact that StormGlass™ is very easy to process, which ensures the building industry of a reliable, consistent and on-time supply.

Oldcastle Glass^® has a strong reputation for its quality service as well as many innovative glass products featured in some of the most high profile architectural installations in North America. Among them are the Getty Center, the LAX Gateway, the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston, The Hawaii Convention Center and the 2002 Olympic Torch in Salt Lake City. Oldcastle Glass^® is a U.S. subsidiary of CRH plc, a leading international building materials and products company based in Dublin, Ireland.

For additional information please contact:
Susan Trimble: Director of Corporate Communications