south africa 1897 founders jacobs & dandor area served worldwide key people gary lubner number of employees 27 000 website belron.com belron is a vehicle glass repair and replacement group operating worldwide across 35 countries and employing over 27 000 people . belron s brands include autoglass in the united kingdom and republic of ireland carglass in most of europe safelite in the united states o brien in australia and smith & smith in new zealand . contents 1 operations 2 history 3 references 4 external links operations edit belron brands repair and replace damaged vehicle glass . in many countries belron brands are able to repair and replace a customer s windscreen 24 hours a day through branch based and mobile services . belron brands complete around 110 000 mobile jobs worldwide on a weekly basis and carry out 8 000 windscreen repairs every day . citation needed in 2012 belron served over 10 million customers . citation needed history edit belron was first founded as a family business in 1897 as jacobs & dandor in cape town south africa . the company was purchased and renamed plate glass bevelling and silvering in 1899 . in 1917 city glass bevelling & silvering works bought out plate glass ; the companies were merged in 1919 and went ahead to gain success in the windscreen industry by securing the business rights to the curved windscreen production technology in 1953 and introducing laminated rear windows in 1958 . the company began its international expansion in 1971 starting with the acquisition of o brien in australia . in 1990 international acquisitions were grouped together under the name belron . gary lubner was named ceo of belron in 2000 ; 1 both his father and grandfather had also led the business . 2 3 in 2013 belron 94.85 % owned by d ieteren had 2 400 branches and 8 600 mobile vans trading under 15 different brands including carglass autoglass and safelite serving customers in 35 countries . revenues in 2015 were 3.1 billion 4 references edit 1 candice krieger may 12 2011 thejc.com bertie lubner passes away april 18 2016 jenna reed glassbytes.com power 100 2013 gary lubner jeremy kuper june 4 2013 the south african d ieteren financial information 2015 external links edit official website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title belron & oldid 737099083 categories automotive companies of south africacompanies based in cape towncompanies established in 1897hidden categories all articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from september 2014 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 31 august 2016 at 19 16 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view