They head very large companies, lead thousands of employees, handle millions or even billions of euros, and above all, they build. In this podcast, we meet the greatest leaders of the construction industry—whether project owners, contractors, industrialists, or project managers. I'm Fabien Renou, editor-in-chief of Le Moniteur, and together we'll try to better understand the challenges facing these top executives, decode their strategy, and grasp their vision. So let's dive into the minds of these decision-makers and better understand what they have on their minds. Today, I have the privilege of speaking with the CEO of one of the world's largest construction industry players, Saint-Gobain. Hello, Benoit Bazin.
Saint-Gobain is a global industrial giant: 47 billion euros in revenue, 160,000 employees, and a presence in 80 countries. Saint-Gobain is an institution with iconic brands like Placo, Isover, PAM, and Pont à Mousson. And Saint-Gobain is a historic monument, as the group is celebrating its 360th anniversary this year. We're about to do a 360-degree tour of the group without leaving this office on the 36th floor of the Saint-Gobain tower in the La Défense district. So, Benoit Bazin, just because you have a long and beautiful history behind you doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels. Quite the opposite—you evolved the group's governance on July 1st to restructure it entirely around major geographic regions. I imagine this was a carefully considered decision that goes back some time. Do you think the risk of trade war that emerged this year validates your approach, and isn't this regional organization logic the answer to rising tariffs?
In a way, today's deglobalization started several years ago. As early as 2019, the board of directors, when appointing me as deputy CEO, asked me to lead a very important first stage: we regionalized 80% of Saint-Gobain's revenue by country. We had gone from global product lines led from France to country-by-country offerings with country CEOs covering roughly 80% of the Saint-Gobain portfolio. This gave us much greater agility in decision-making, closer proximity to our clients, and the ability to sell not just products but systems—multiproduct solutions for facades, energy renovation, and so on. We then went even further to put 100% of the group on a country basis. This organization is perfectly suited to our markets—you don't build the same way in Vietnam, Canada, or Argentina. Our manufacturing chains and supply logistics are also local. We have 1,100 factories worldwide. So it's very natural, and in fact our world of construction materials isn't directly impacted by tariffs or trade wars. It's a strong adaptation to our markets and to the deglobalized geopolitical environment that started years ago.
Speaking of specific regions, we know that despite the turbulence of Donald Trump, the United States remains a priority market for you—North America broadly speaking. What makes a region dynamic for the construction market? North America is one, but there are others. What are the drivers of construction dynamism?
The first driver for us is population growth—whether natural or through immigration—because population means housing, mostly new housing in North America but renovation in Europe. That's really the first criterion. We were underrepresented in the US with 10-11% of our revenue six or seven years ago, and now we have 22-23% of our revenue and a third of our results. The US is where we've invested over 7 billion dollars, including Canada, and we're now number one in construction materials in the US and Canada, where we've tripled in size. This involved a lot of investment—both acquisitions and public tender offers for American companies, as well as buying three excellent Canadian family-owned companies. North America is a zone of growth because there are roughly 5 million homes to build between now and 2030 in Canada, and a 4 million housing deficit already exists in the US, regardless of whether you're in a Republican or Democratic state. Other zones are naturally Asia and India. India is our third or fourth country in terms of results. PAM is number one in all its business lines there—flat glass, plasterboard, insulation, chemicals, construction. Then there's Southeast Asia, and more recently Australia. We made our largest acquisition in 20 years through a public tender offer in Australia—there was a small player there that is now part of the group. Fundamentally, it's about population growth. These emerging zones—Asia, emerging countries where great metropolises are being built—and the Middle East with countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. In Egypt, about thirty mega-cities will be built in the coming years. So there's a very strong need to support population growth.
And China—is it inaccessible?
We're present in China with about 3% of our revenue on certain business lines. It's not always easy to be profitable there. That's why we stayed in business lines like plasterboard where we're very profitable, and our ceramic expertise applied to industrial markets. China represents about 3% of our business, led by a Chinese manager, and we're in China for China.
Speaking of the shift from an organization based on major product lines managed from headquarters here to a more geographic logic—which I imagine led to diversification of group management—what does it change to have a Spaniard, an American, an Indian on your executive team?
It's a huge advantage because they know their local markets. It gives us experience and accountability for their country's success and regional performance. The group's performance has been strong over the past six years: we've doubled our net result per share, grown in terms of revenue, and essentially tripled our share price. This reflects the group's good track record. More than 90% of our country CEOs are natives of their countries. Who better than a Polish woman to know—better than me in Paris—how to build in Krakow or Warsaw, and have perfect collaboration across all business lines in a territory and know the architects? It's really a source of great power, great efficiency, and great pride for these regional leaders. It's a cultural change on which we naturally maintain all Saint-Gobain's values and operating principles, because we have three major functions beyond the corporate ones—finance, HR, legal, tax—that act as the glue and synergies across the group: innovation, industrial performance with people who steer major investments and define best practices across business lines, and then everything digital and IT. These three central departments are very effective and ensure the group's overall performance and the circulation of information and best practices.
Beyond the geographic distribution of your investments, you've reinforced your position in construction chemicals in recent years. Why is this activity strategic in your eyes?
Saint-Gobain's strategy is to be the world leader in sustainable construction. This is perfectly aligned with our purpose: 'Making the world a better home.' Construction chemicals tick both boxes we're targeting: decarbonizing the construction world and secondly, performance and productivity on construction sites. This is what we've built notably with Chryso, a gem that belonged to Lafarge about twenty years ago and had been under-invested. We added Grace Construction Products and FOSROC in the Middle East, creating a global presence in 76 countries. Admixtures can decarbonize concrete—we can reduce CO2 content by three or four times by changing the formulation with decarbonated materials while ensuring workability and resistance to salinity for coastal structures and bridges. So it's about decarbonizing concrete and cement, and also about jobsite productivity. Beyond admixtures and cement additives, there's a whole range from tile adhesive to facade renders to waterproofing membranes. You see all the flooding and storm issues we face in France and Europe—waterproofing and membranes are also part of construction chemicals, a market worth about 100 billion in revenue. We have roughly 6.5 billion of that. We've multiplied by more than two over the years through growth, consolidation, and innovation, particularly on decarbonization.
You recently published a book at Éditions de l'Aube titled Voies de passage. Voies de passage, plural, is presented as a book of conversations with Laurent Berger, the former general secretary of the CFDT, and naturally the question of social dialogue is largely addressed. You explain giving a lot of information, including financial data, to employee representatives. This transparency is commendable because it aims to nourish quality social dialogue. Does it really work?
Yes, it works and has for a long time. But more fundamentally, Voies de passage is about showing that many things happen in companies. Companies are a place of collective action, of social unity, and I hope most often a place of personal fulfillment. Fundamentally, the role of a leader is to provide strategic vision and then ensure everyone finds their place—how to put individual talents at the service of collective ambition. Social dialogue is very important for that because it gives meaning, it empowers people. You can set a strategic course. There's a balance to strike, and naturally not everything is perfect. We'd like to do better and faster, but this enables meaningful dialogue. I believe strongly in it, and it's very much practiced at Saint-Gobain in France and worldwide. A concrete example is value sharing—over 65,000 of our employees are shareholders, making them the largest shareholder with over 8% of capital. In the last subscription campaign in March 2025, 75% of our employee shareholders in France subscribed to additional shares. This shows they trust the company, understand the strategy, and see the performance measures. Over 50% of our Australian colleagues who joined us less than a year ago also bought Saint-Gobain shares. Social dialogue, value sharing, autonomy in work to see how one individually contributes to collective success—these are part of the company's performance, which isn't just financial. It's also about meeting societal commitments, respecting the ecological and climate transition, and that's what makes holistic corporate performance.
Saint-Gobain is an industrial group working for the construction sector, doubly concerned by the decarbonization imperative. In France, this first requires clean, affordable electricity—which led to a heated exchange with former EDF CEO Luc Raymond. In your view, is the energy transition also a matter of sovereignty?
Fundamentally, the transition is a climate imperative. We all see the heatwaves arriving earlier and earlier in France—there is real climate change, certainly accelerated by humans. So it's first and foremost a climate issue. Behind that, there's a very strong energy challenge, because building energy consumption represents 35-40% of CO2 emissions, and two-thirds of that is from the building's operational life. So it's fundamentally about energy efficiency in winter, eliminating air conditioning needs in summer if you have a good building envelope. If we work on energy efficiency well, we also find sovereignty—you know France imports enormous amounts of energy. In buildings alone, 45% of the country's energy consumption is spent on buildings—far more than our national nuclear fleet produces when running at 100%. So saving energy in buildings to free it up for mobility and industry is part of national sovereignty. When we look at a country, we assess its attractiveness along four axes: cost of labor, taxation, infrastructure for supplying raw materials and shipping products, education—whether we have trained technicians, engineers, artisans—and then energy. Is it affordable? Is it secure in terms of supply? Is it decarbonized? Is it competitive?
Speaking of France, there's a lot of talk about decarbonized electricity thanks to nuclear power, but you also mention green gas in Finland and biomethane in Brazil. On energy supply, do you also trust local solutions?
We are indeed very decentralized, and it's our country CEOs who find the right solutions. Another example is biomass in India—our sixth plasterboard factory in India, in Andhra Pradesh, a flood-prone zone. Farmers bring their rice to food industries that hull the rice, and we collect the rice husks to make briquettes. There's no electricity, no gas in this factory—we burn briquettes made from rice husks. So yes, we need to find the best decarbonized supply sources. The world's first low-carbon plasterboard plant, we built it ahead of everyone else in Norway using hydroelectricity. The second is starting this summer in Canada. This is how we're moving very fast on decarbonizing Saint-Gobain's footprint, using biomass, biogas, rice briquettes, sometimes hydroelectricity. We've already come a long way—over the past six or seven years, we've reduced our direct CO2 emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by 34%, even as the group has grown. The dynamic at Saint-Gobain is to maximize the positive impact of our solutions—having the right building envelope for energy efficiency—and secondly, to minimize our own footprint. That's the virtuous cycle we're on.
What about green hydrogen?
We've tested hydrogen a little bit. We even achieved a world first by introducing hydrogen into a large float glass plant for primary glass manufacturing, which is technically quite challenging. We did this world first. After that, hydrogen needs to be competitive. But if it becomes so, we could use it alongside electricity—and potentially biogas—as a complement in our large glassworks.
We talk about decarbonization and energy transition, but we've seen a notable retreat on environmental issues in the political agenda for several months now. You recently signed an op-ed with other major company leaders asking not to roll back the European Green Deal. In your view, even if finances are in the red, even if other regions of the world take a different path, Europe must continue its investments in the ecological transition. Why?
