Our History 
Quality You Can Clearly See     

   T. Ross Barber took over in the late 1930's and developed this further into a retail glass shop. This business was subsequently sold in the early 1950's to his son, D.S. Barber, father of the current owner, who expanded it into a full service glass shop selling commercial glazing, decorative mirrors and retail glazing.

   In 1990 D.S. Barber passed away leaving the business to his son John Ross Barber. John had already created a new division, Barber Glass Industries, in 1988 and chose to keep these operations entirely separate so each could maintain their individual focus.

Barber Glass Industries was founded based on John's vision of creating a world class fabrication facility capable of supplying high tech products to the architectural glazing, automotive after market and furniture industries.

John's vision was fueled by the belief that the future growth of the company would always be ensured through commitment to total customer satisfaction, providing premium quality products, high standards in services and innovative products at a fair market price.

John R. Barber   President

"Service", BGI's primary focus, will be continuously redefined yearly and will always be the key to success. John knew that we must always be better than the previous year from all perspectives - service, quality and consistency.

John proceeded to purchase the assets of a bankrupt company and state-of-the art polishing equipment. These moves would have been considered very unorthodox business decisions considering this was in the midst of a major recession. These decisions, though very unpopular with our lenders at the time, are regarded today as the best business decisions ever made by the company.

Barber had steady growth and profitably from 1993 to 1996. In 1996 John Barber realized that in order to reach the critical mass required to be competitive in a broad international market, he must look at expanding and adding additional processes. John looked forward to addressing the growing need for safety glazing materials while ensuring that operating efficiencies were maximized along the way.

In late 1996 John negotiated the purchase of a 61,000 square foot manufacturing facility at 485 Southgate Drive, Guelph for the purpose of moving the manufacturing division. John put together an aggressive five year plan for purchasing of equipment, always based on a strong emphasis towards utilizing the highest technology available, ensuring that sales and profitability were supported.

Guelph Facility   Guelph, Ontario Canada

John added a state-of-the-art 82" x 144" Tamglass double bay tempering furnace to the production capacity effective with the move to the new facility. Over the next three years Barber added a 4000 square foot office, a robot loaded 130 x 240 Bystronic cutting system, numerous Intermac master edgers, compact edgers, straight line edgers, and a manual screen print process.

In 2000 a further 15,000 square feet was added to accommodate a robot loaded double edger, an Iannu automated screen print line and a Tamglass laminating line handling sizes up to 98" x 144" in substrates from 6 to 80 mm thick.