The event, a daytime conference followed by the annual Glass Focus awards, was held in Sheffield at the Mercure St Paul’s Hotel. It was a great chance to get face-to-face with people from across the glass industry and show what we all can do – at individual, company and industry level. We're very grateful to all who helped make this event possible – especially our sponsors.
The awards themselves covered areas including product design, sustainability, health and safety, workforce development and more.
Allied Glass has shown excellence across the year in terms of its own business performance while also representing and strengthening the glass sector as a whole.
Their investment in a new decoration line and office space has allowed them to continue to manufacture high-quality, innovative designs for a number of customers in the spirits sector.
The Knottingley-based business has also strengthened their ties with their local area through a number of community initiatives, including refurbishing the library of a school, and has been actively engaged with British Glass committees making them a worthy winner.
Sponsored by:
British Glass
Saint-Gobain UK’s Joe Boyd is nearing the end of his apprenticeship as a Control and Instrumentation Engineer, which has seen him work on all three production lines on automation investigations, adaptations and new capability design at the Eggborough site.
Joe has been working closely with the Industry 4.0 team and his value to the company has already been demonstrated saving the business money with programmes he has been responsible for and implemented.
The judges were very impressed with 21-year-old Joe’s work so far which includes working on international projects in and outside of Europe as well as being trusted to implement a £20k from start to finish.
Sponsored by:
Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers of London
Volunteers at O-I’s site in Alloa have created a talent pipeline alongside UK charity Career Ready for youngsters in the local area to join the glass industry which goes from mentoring school students to internships, an apprentice scheme and, finally, permanent employment.
The partnership has already seen two new employees begin their careers at the Alloa glass plant, learning from experienced and skilled practitioners.
Judges were impressed with the programme building a sense of community in the local area and encouraging people to come into the glass industry by providing guidance and mentoring.
Sponsored by:
Glass Futures
Sustainability is key to the glass industry and this year; Saint-Gobain UK took major steps to deliver on their commitment for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 by extending their ‘Glass Forever’ programme to include post-consumer glass.
Currently most glass from old windows ends up in landfill due to difficulty in extracting, collecting and processing the glass however, Saint-Gobain has introduced a number of new innovations, including a new processing machine, to take old flat glass and re-manufacture it into high-performance coated glass.
The initiative has helped increase cullet ratio at the company’s Eggborough plant to above 40%.
Judges hailed Saint-Gobain for not waiting for legislation to implement the initiative and the global impact that the CO2 reduction from the programme will have.
Sponsored by:
AFT
For the Health and Safety Action award the judges agreed that the Swabbing Robots, manufactured by Socabelec in Belgium, and installed by Encirc on nine of their lines at their plant in Cheshire, were “head and shoulders above everything else,” and couldn’t sperate the two entries.
The autonomous robots swab the moulds on the I.S. machine while it is still in operation by spraying them with oil at 20-minute intervals.
This in turn eliminates the danger to Encirc employees, the risk of human error and the need to turn off the machines to manually swab the moulds which in turn has improved productivity and health and safety at the company.
Sponsored by:
Arco Safety
Intensive training is key for hot-end workers in the glass industry and Encirc have found a unique way to improve the training they give to their staff in a safe environment, without an impact on production, by installing a virtual reality training room at their site in Elton, Cheshire.
Featuring a fully functional three-section glass forming I.S machine, the state of the art facility enables the company to effectively train new staff in hazardous scenarios, such as the outbreak of a fire in the factory, safely and give a greater understanding of the machines they’ll be working with which wouldn’t be otherwise possible on a machine that is in production.
As a result, it’s expected that the use of VR will cut down the length of training a new recruit by one week.
The judges praised the entry as a “step into the future of glass making” that will attract young people to come into the glass industry.
Sponsored by:
Limab UK
Saint-Gobain Glass UK’s work on the beautifully engineered Macallan Distillery and visitor centre saw them become the inaugural winners of this category.
The company created a striking façade for the building from 59mm thick double-glazed units of laminated heat strengthened safety glass and the design had to take into account the potential of natural movement from one of the most complicated timber roof structures in the world.
Solar control was also of high importance in the project, which remained sensitive to its natural surroundings, and impressed our judges as a “great example of using glass at its manufacturing limit to solve a problem.”
Sponsored by:
Glass Technology Services
Crafting a new design for Glenfiddich’s 12 and 15-year-old single malt whiskies, the Ardagh Group were tasked with emphasising the iconic brands unique heritage and origins in a new bottle.
The resulting design features a distinct V groove on the front, shoulder embossing, a new label platform on the neck and a seam-free labelling area while Ardagh also overcame several challenges in the manufacturing process to create the bottle.
While acknowledging that this category was one of the most difficult to pick a winner in, the judges were impressed with the “classy, authentic and simple but very elegant design which set it apart from the rest of the entries in this category.”
Sponsored by:
The Packaging Collective
