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Last Friday, 4th February 2022, saw the ground-breaking of the Glass Futures’ Global Centre of Excellence in St Helens.
The £54 million project will create the world’s first openly accessible test and trial furnace facility, which will be used to deliver industry and government-backed R&D projects focused on decarbonising glass production, and also providing a platform for industry to test and trial their own commercial ideas on a state-of-the-art line, both collaboratively and individually.
Mayor Steve Rotheram with St Helens Leader David Baines, Councillors and representatives of Glass Futures.
Based in the traditional centre of the UK glass making industry in St Helens, Glass Futures is a unique, industry-backed Research and Technology Organisation, leading collaboration across some of the largest companies in the global glass industry and its supply chain, together with academia and local and central government.
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said:
Speaking at the ground-breaking event, St Helens Borough Council Leader, David Baines, said:
The project has been awarded a £9m grant from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and secured a £15m UKRI grant to support the installation of a globally unique, experimental furnace and state of the art infrastructure, capable of melting 30 tonnes of glass per day in a safe experimental space. Glass sector companies will also contribute a further £20m in resource, time and equipment to support the project.
Impression of what Glass Futures will look like
The 165,000 sq ft transformational global glass research and innovation facility is expected to complete in January 2023, ready for fit-out. It is being delivered by Network Space Developments (NSD) at Saints Retail Park. Occupying a site with links to the historic glass industry for which the town is famed, where NSD has in-part redeveloped this former United Glassworks site as a new stadium for St Helens Rugby League.
Delivery of the project was conceived and is being managed by landowner and developer NSD, on behalf of a partnership including not-for-profit research organisation Glass Futures, St Helens Borough Council, the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and UKRI (UK Research & Innovation). This dynamic and fast-moving partnership has rapidly turned the Glass Futures concept into a deliverable and contracted scheme in less than two years. NSD will continue to manage the delivery of the project through to practical completion.
The Centre’s construction will bring a host of social and economic benefits to St Helens and the wider Liverpool Citry Region including:
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