A factory that overloads the senses, owing to its blisteringly hot glass furnaces, where heated glass bottles whizz around on huge, high-speed automated production lines. Employees at Encirc explain more and discuss why they were crowned The Manufacturer MX Awards (TMMX) Sustainable Manufacturer of the Year 2022. Tom St John reports.
This was actually my second visit to Encirc’s Chester site; I dropped by last year while moderating the judging process for the sustainability award category of TMMX Awards. At that point, we didn’t know that Encirc had acquired Accolade Wines, The Park, winners of the same category the year before. The acquisition was a strategic one. The Park, an impressive wine bottling facility, is situated in Bristol, and now serves as a hub in the southwest, a region of the UK that Encirc wasn’t previously based.
This has also opened up a large market for the business, by effectively doubling its filling capacity. Encirc now fills up to a third of the wine for the whole of the UK, and around 400 million litres of all beverages for the UK market. All in all, a fantastic acquisition, and a partnership that both companies are looking forward to developing in the future. As moderator for TMMX judging site visits, my job was to keep each company to a tight timeframe to ensure fairness. The Encirc facility in Cheshire is huge – you could make a factory visit last two hours, quite easily.
Unfortunately, I had to call time after 45 minutes. And it felt incredibly off hand to disrupt such passionate people while they were in full flow. Fiacre O’Donnell was one of them, the Sustainability Director for Vidrala, the parent company of Encirc. Therefore, it was an enjoyable change this time around – I could tour the factory with my colleague Joe Bush and listen to Fiacre, alongside Oliver Harry, Head of Corporate Affairs and Rebecca Dilworth, Stakeholder Engagement Manager, unencumbered by time constraints.
Tell us more about Encirc
FOD: Encirc is made up of four sites across Europe. We have a container We have been working to address this carbon element to ensure glass is always the sustainable packaging of choice. Developing sustainable furnaces is one way of addressing this. In 2021, in partnership with industry body, Glass Futures, we fuelled one of our furnaces in our Northern Ireland plant on biofuels and used 100% recycled glass to make our bottles. The results saw bottles with a reduced carbon footprint of up to 90%. We have more recently announced plans to utilise hydrogen in our Cheshire plant to power furnaces in the future. Along with decarbonising our transport network, we believe that, in the long-term, zero emission container glass is possible.
Why did sustainability become important to your business?
FOD: We’re at the point where everyone expects brands and businesses to adopt a sustainable approach. Whether that’s consumers, brands or retail. Encirc makes more than a third of the glass containers in the UK and Irish markets. We know that small changes can make a big difference. It is hugely challenging – container glass has been produced for thousands of years and ultimately, while processes have changed and production techniques have improved, glass has essentially always been produced by using fossil fuels. We are attempting to change that in a relatively short time. But we remain focussed on the task at hand and optimistic that with the right drive and support we can achieve it.
OH: I know everyone talks about sustainability constantly, but there’s a reason for that. We’re seeing a real pull from brands and supermarkets to become as sustainable as we can. It’s exciting for us because I think we’re a world leader in sustainable practices, and we’re very driven in our pursuit of creating decarbonised glass. glass making plant in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, a further glass plant and filling hall here in Cheshire, a beverages filling hall at The Park in Bristol and a glass making factory in Corsico, Italy. We’re the only glass makers in the world to combine glass making with on-site filling and distribution. As such, we can make wine bottles, fill them with product shipped to us by customers from all over the world, then distribute the bottles straight to retail. It’s the most efficient and sustainable model of its kind globally.
What sustainability challenges has your business faced and how did you overcome them?
FOD: Glass wins on most sustainability metrics. It is endlessly recyclable, and it never loses its quality during the process. It’s chemically inert, meaning it doesn’t leach chemicals into your food or drink, and we use high recycled content in the containers we produce. The key issue is the high carbon emissions compared to other packaging materials in producing and transporting glass. We have been working to address this carbon element to ensure glass is always the sustainable packaging of choice. Developing sustainable furnaces is one way of addressing this. In 2021, in partnership with industry body, Glass Futures, we fuelled one of our furnaces in our Northern Ireland plant on biofuels and used 100% recycled glass to make our bottles. The results saw bottles with a reduced carbon footprint of up to 90%. We have more recently announced plans to utilise hydrogen in our Cheshire plant to power furnaces in the future. Along with decarbonising our transport network, we believe that, in the long-term, zero emission container glass is possible.
Why did sustainability become important to your business?
FOD: We’re at the point where everyone expects brands and businesses to adopt a sustainable approach. Whether that’s consumers, brands or retail. Encirc makes more than a third of the glass containers in the UK and Irish markets. We know that small changes can make a big difference. It is hugely challenging – container glass has been produced for thousands of years and ultimately, while processes have changed and production techniques have improved, glass has essentially always been produced by using fossil fuels. We are attempting to change that in a relatively short time. But we remain focussed on the task at hand and optimistic that with the right drive and support we can achieve it.
OH: I know everyone talks about sustainability constantly, but there’s a reason for that. We’re seeing a real pull from brands and supermarkets to become as sustainable as we can. It’s exciting for us because I think we’re a world leader in sustainable practices, and we’re very driven in our pursuit of creating decarbonised glass. Ultimately, we’d like to create zero carbon glass; we think there’s a real future for that. It’s not just an imperative for environmental reasons but also for the economy, and the future of our business from a commercial point of view.
What were the key drivers when it came to implementing sustainability strategies into your business?
FOD: Sustainability covers so many key areas, whether that’s carbon, our people, the impact on our communities or the positive change we can make to the planet. In fact, our sustainability strategy is focussed on four key areas – People, Place, Planet and Prosperity. Our drivers are of course global initiatives like the Sustainable Development Goals, and our ambitious science-based targets, but as a business we pride ourselves on doing the right thing. We’re conscious disruptors in all we do. We lead the way when it comes to innovating our industry, but we’re conscious about our impact on the environment, and we work hard to support local causes and really maximise our social impact. Our people play such a huge role in the bigger picture that surrounds our goals. Together we can make a real difference.
How are digital technologies helping to drive the business forward?
OH: We are taking huge strides forward in the digitalisation of glass. We’ve been working to create the smart bottle of the future on one of our lines at the Cheshire plant. Our high-speed Industry 4.0 line is capable of indenting a laser printed QR code onto every bottle it produces. This contains the source information of those bottles, making the possibilities for the future endless. You can enter any amount of information and it can prompt machine learning. The benefits for the consumer, brand and retailer are also really interesting. There are many amazing things that digitalised glass linked to blockchain technology can achieve in the future.
How have you navigated the recent difficulties around supply chain visibility and resilience?
OH: You couldn’t really make up the number of issues we’ve had over the last few years. We’ve had the pandemic, gas and energy price hikes, CO2 shortages and lorry driver issues that lasted for several months. It proved to us that we’re a robust business because we navigated all of those challenges very well. The energy price hike situation and the conflict in Ukraine was painful for a lot of manufacturers, especially energy intensive businesses. We saw our energy bills go up by five times and we had to swallow and absorb those costs. It proved again that we’re a strong and resilient business. I’d say in the current climate, things are positive and we’re looking strong. I don’t foresee too many supply chain issues.
What are some of the key success indicators that you have seen after implementing measures to solve challenges?
FOD: I’ve already mentioned our work on sustainable furnaces and the success that we’ve achieved so far, while our 360 model is the most sustainable of its kind globally. We’ve had incredible success in empowering our people, with a workforce made up of over 2,100 employees. Setting a clear vision and purpose to inspire and engage is the number one factor for success. As a result of much work in this area we now have employee-led groups and communities at Encirc. These include biodiversity groups making real differences to our sites and local schools. We have a ‘Women in Manufacturing’ group addressing the barriers and inequalities faced by women entering what has traditionally always been a male-dominated industry, and we have a charity and CSR programme, led by volunteers that is continually being improved.
OH: We’ve been going through a real culture change at Encirc for many years now, placing the health and wellbeing of our people at the forefront of all we do, and that of course, includes diversity. I’d say biodiversity and sustainability flows throughout our businesses from the number of groups we have, be it biodiversity or volunteer groups. This has a really positive impact on communities as well, which is another important aspect for us.
Is sustainability knowledge important to you and to your business and how do you build on it?
FOD: Whether it’s continuous improvement or personal development, we’re always building. We recently had 11 people from right across the business achieve their diplomas in Business Sustainability, as well as 40 people who completed Carbon Literacy training. Sustainability is one of our six company values, and we recruit and manage our people based on behaviours attributed to each one.
How important is education to overcome barriers to change?
FOD: It’s vital. As a business our people are truly driving our change. But I think there is a wider responsibility that we have as an industry to educate communities and consumers to make informed decisions when deciding what packaging they purchase. As we shape our place in a truly sustainable world, where the circular economy is key, we need to fight for glass, educate people on its virtues, and combat greenwashing and false claims other packaging types can make.
A recurring pain point for manufacturers is the continued battle for talent and skills. Is that something that Encirc has struggled with?
OH: We’re in a unique period of time. All these emerging trends around digital, data analytics, new fuels being used in furnaces etc, they’re all happening at the same time. There’s not a person who can just come in and operate a hydrogen furnace. I think one of the keys for us is working out how to bring in the next generation of talent who are interested in those particular areas. We run a really successful programme called Ignite that’s bringing in new apprentices, graduates and work placements in the key development areas that were interested in pursuing.
We have good relationships with colleges and universities as well. We need to keep pushing in those areas and keep isolating the gaps that we see. There’s going to be a need for future skills in many areas, and sustainable fuels is just one of them. There will also be intelligent transport network distributions and similar areas that will arise in the future. We’ve got to keep pushing to attract those younger generations into Encirc, as well as current and experienced generations, when it comes to retraining and upskilling.
What are the next sustainability goals that you would like to achieve?
FOD: This year we launched a new mission for our business called ZE30 – or zero emissions by 2030. The mission was launched to more than 150 senior managers across our business at a conference in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. I think it is fair to say the mission is getting huge buy-in from our people. We know how hard this mission will be to achieve, and we know that without all our people pulling in the same direction it will be impossible. The mission is split into three project streams. They are decarbonisation, creating a great place to work, and ensuring prosperity and success. I’d argue that prioritising sustainability isn’t a new thing for us. We were fully committed well before the COVID pandemic, and we have not lost our focus throughout the various global crises of the last few years.
What advice would you give to other businesses on their sustainability journey?
OH: I would say what we’ve learned over the last ten years is you need to have a bold vision and you need to get your people onboard with that vision. Our ZE30 mission has really challenged our people to get behind several initiatives to see how we can achieve that. So, I’d say have a bold vision, and get the people behind you to enact that vision.
FOD: Start with your purpose. Find something that will inspire and excite your people, but is fully relevant to your business model, and will allow you to shape a strategy that your stakeholders can get involved with. Sustainability doesn’t just make sense ethically; it makes complete business sense and will help you grow while futureproofing your organisation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Employee buy-in is important, but pointless if they’re not then empowered to make a difference. Encirc’s initiatives allow them to do this
• Skills gaps could continue to grow as processes and tech continues to develop. Outreach to communities and education centres is vital
• Smart bottles will be a technology to keep our eyes on
• Despite being advanced in its sustainability journey, the goal at Encirc is to continuously improve
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