As you may have heard, the Italian office has existed for more than 20 years. It’s a completely unique case. In some countries, we only have salespeople working alone. In Italy, Saint-Gobain kept the complete structure of the Italian distributor acquired many years ago by Furon, before becoming Omniseal Solutions™.

With some exceptions, like Luciano, many people have changed over the years. Personally, I have worked in the office for almost 13 years! The size of the team, however, remained the same size (approx. 10 people). Also, we have always lived as a kind of separate small entity, both compared to the Omniseal Solutions™ sites and compared to the Italian Saint-Gobain entity that we belong to. Kind of like the satellites we work with and that speaks with our space applications - connected with the earth but moving independently.

Somewhere in the 90s, we received a big claim from a very well-known F1 team. They were facing problems with our seals and one of the biggest issues was debris in the cavity of the seal. Since it was an important account to Kontich and the opportunity was there to become even bigger and recognized in the F1 world, we couldn’t ignore their comments. One of our responses was to build a cleanroom. This is a temperature, humidity, and cleanliness-controlled room.

One machine, one table, one microscope … that’s how it all started. With a lot of agility, knowledge, and drive, our cleanroom became well known in the F1 world. When needed, we put in a lot of overtime to help the customers out, people went on airplanes with seals in their hand luggage, we were invited to the F1 circuit, lots of prototyping (with little more than a sketch to start from), and “first time ever” situations … the golden times of the F1 within SG.

Caring for the local and global community doesn't just make business sense, it is a privilege, one which the employees of Omniseal Solutions™ enjoy. In this article, read about how 37 members of our team in Belgium have become foster parents to underprivileged communities in Togo. The rewards have gone both ways, enriching the lives of the villagers, but also giving the team a sense of pride, accomplishment and a unique view on the world we live in.