Fuyao windshield has place of honor at park

The first windshield from the Moraine Fuyao Glass America plant is now on permanent display at Carillon Historical Park.

In July 2015, Fuyao and the Dayton Development Coalition first announced that the first production automotive windshield from the plant would be kept on display at a Dayton History exhibit at the park, not far from the final GMC Envoy built at the same plant when General Motors ran the facility.

GM ended operations at the plant in December 2008. Fuyao Glass America purchased 1.4 million square feet of space at the plant for $15 million in May 2014.

Globally, the Chinese company has 18,000 employees. Today, the plant off West Stroop Road has more than 1,500 employees and is still hiring.

After an investment of about $450 million, it is the largest auto glass manufacturing plant in the world, the company’s leaders have said.

“This piece of glass symbolizes our commitment to this community,” John Gauthier, Fuyao Glass America president, said in a statement released Monday from the Dayton Development Coalition. “It represents our future and our prosperity here in Moraine.”

“General Motors and Frigidaire both presented Carillon Park with the first and last products manufactured at this site, and we were thrilled Fuyao wanted to continue that tradition,” Brady Kress, Dayton History president and chief executive, said in the same statement. “What better way to illustrate the site’s redevelopment than to place the last truck and the first piece of glass side by side?”

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