Encirc recently announced it plans to invest £50m to upgrade its Derrylin, UK plant and rebuild its furnaces. The furnaces will be rebuilt in 2019 and 2021 to accept natural gas which will be piped to Derrylin in a scheme called the Gas to the West initiative (ref: Impartial Reporter). The £250m gas project will see the construction of around 200km of pipeline linking Coalisland, Cookstown, Derrylin, Dungannon, Enniskillen, Magherafelt, Omagh and Strabane to the existing gas network. "Bringing gas in will help environmentally, it will help with our emissions and it also takes three large road tankers (of oil) off the road per day. But it means we will produce less glass because oil is more efficient at melting glass," said Encirc MD, Adrian Curry. "The complication is that we have to design our furnaces differently. We've worked very closely with Arlene Foster and her team a number of years ago and more recently with the gas providers to get to a point where everyone is certain this is going to happen because it does influence heavily on the decisions we make," he added.
