At long last, some good news on the glass front. According to Guardian Glass, repairs and upgrades at their facility in Goole are due to be completed this month. They released a statement on their website yesterday to give a progress report on the state of play at their plant in East Yorkshire, and it looks like some relief may be on the horizon by the end of the year, if not the start of next year.

Guardian Glass statement

Here is what they published just yesterday:

Guardian Glass is investing significantly in its Goole, East Yorkshire float glass production plant to increase the company’s ability to supply float glass, primarily to the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland, while also improving the plant’s energy efficiency.

The cold tank repair, which began in April and will be completed this month, will rebuild the furnace with one of the most advanced technologies available, and expand the melting capacity by 20 percent to 825 metric tons per day.

“Guardian Glass is investing in the future of commercial and residential building in the UK and Ireland,” says Guus Boekhoudt, Executive Vice President, Guardian Glass. “This work assures that Guardian can continue to support the evolving demands of our customers with greater capacity, efficiency and environmental stewardship. It also underscores our Vision to be a preferred partner to our customers, suppliers, employees and communities based on a foundation of mutual benefit.”

As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of float, coated and fabricated glass products, and the only UK glass manufacturer with building products achieving the bronze Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Standard version 3.1, Guardian is committed to our Stewardship Framework. This core principle ensures that we consider environmental, social and corporate governance priorities in our day-to-day operations as we strive to find more efficient uses of resources, continuously improve our products and services and strengthen partnerships with our local communities around the world.

The Goole facility produces a wide range of float, coated and laminated glass products. Almost 100 percent of the solar control glass produced at the facility supplies projects within the UK.

Enhancements to the Goole facility include:

  • A furnace with improved energy efficiency and increased output.
  • Enhanced automation to provide more reliable operations and reduce manual tasks. This enables team members to advance their skills by taking on more challenging responsibilities.
  • Ongoing initiative to recycle cullet. Increasing the cullet ratio in products cuts energy consumption, reduces raw materials and reduces waste.

“Operations transformation improves efficiency and effectiveness, which boosts productivity and gives Guardian Glass a competitive advantage,” explains Goole Plant Manager Chris Duguid. “These changes are critical to demonstrate to our partners that we value them and will continue to support them with industry-leading products and services. We’re very proud of the team’s execution, especially during this challenging time.”

We may have to be a bit patient. The finishing of a glass plant upgrade doesn’t mean immediate glass hitting IGU companies. And there is still ongoing repairs at the Saint-Gobain facility in the UK as well. It’s going to take a bit of time to get the glass off the line at the Goole facility and into IGU makers. I don’t imagine there is going to be a flood of glass hitting the market straight away.

That being said, the end of the year and the start of next year should see more glass available within the fenestration sector, which should ease at least some of the supply chain problems. So long as there are no more unexpected problems between now and then! There is also going to be a fight for supplies with the automotive sector. They too require huge amounts of glass and they will be urging their own suppliers to supply them first. I’m not anticipating a return to 100% availability, but it should be far better than it has been of late.

So, how to solve the shortages of everything else…

Read the original Guardian Glass statement here.

To get weekly updates from DGB sent to your inbox, enter your email address in the space below to subscribe:

By subscribing you agree to DGB sending you weekly email updates with all published content on this website, as well as any major updates to the services being run on DGB. Your data is never passed on to third parties or used by external advertising companies. Your data is protected and stored on secure servers run by Fivenines UK Ltd.