"By investing in R&D, we invest in the future of high-performance materials and, consequently, in the future of our customers and our company," said Christian Streiff, president, Saint-Gobain High-Performance Materials and senior vice president, Compagnie de Saint-Gobain. The occasion was an open house celebrating the completion of a $2 million expansion of the Saint-Gobain High-Performance Materials Northboro R&D Center, located in Northboro, Mass. "The Northboro expansion is the first of three significant R&D milestones for us," he said. "The next is an open house at Saint-Gobain CREE, our R&D center in Cavaillon, France. The third will be the opening of an R&D center in China within the next year." The Northboro operation, which has been a major center for industrial ceramics research since 1985, now becomes Saint-Gobain's main location for high-performance plastics research and will also accommodate abrasives research.

The company's website is located at http://www.saint-gobain.com .