Located on brownfield land on the edge of St Helens town centre next to the Totally Wicked Stadium, Glass Futures will be a 160,000 sq. ft Centre of Excellence, looking at how carbon can be reduced from the glass production process.

Landowner and developer Network Space has appointed Civil & Remediation Ltd, an earthworks and remediation contractor to prepare the wider site for future development and significant progress is being made.

What was once a colliery before becoming a glassworks, has left a legacy of heavy metal concentrations together with gas and asbestos contamination.

This phase of the project will now take around a month to complete before the main construction works start in late autumn.

The development is backed by St Helens Borough Council who committed funding to cover pre-planning and planning costs – while the scheme also received a major boost after Network Space secured a £9 million contribution from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.

Commenting at a recent site visit, St Helens Borough Council Leader David Baines said: “St Helens is steeped in glass manufacturing, and we want to keep it that way and at the heart of global innovation – and having Glass Futures here will put us at the centre of sustainable glass making for decades to come which also supports our climate emergency declaration.”

Glass Futures is expected to be completed in 2022, bringing a number of high-skilled jobs to St Helens.

www.glass-futures.org

Image: Site preparation begins at the Glass Futures site