Saint Gobain is replacing a 21-year-old flat glass furnace at its Eggborough plant in North Yorkshire with a brand-new, more efficient design. This matters because the existing furnace is inefficient, costly to maintain, resource intensive, and poses ongoing health and safety challenges. The furnace is the most energy-intensive part of flat glass production, and the current setup wastes energy by reheating molten glass multiple times as it circulates through the furnace sections. The project also upgrades the rest of the production line—batch plant, float, annealing lehr, cutting, and stacking—to improve efficiency and enable higher production rates. If successful, the new furnace will dramatically reduce energy consumption, emissions, and maintenance costs. The upgrades will also increase daily production capacity. Because flat glass is used in buildings, transportation, and infrastructure, these improvements help lower the carbon footprint of construction and manufacturing—systems that quietly underpin daily life but rarely get noticed. The project is a direct industrial investment, not fundamental science, with clear, measurable benefits for energy use and emissions.
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Saint Gobain designs, manufactures and distributes solutions that are found in our living places and our daily life: in buildings, transportation, infrastructure and in many industrial applications. They provide comfort, performance and safety while addressing the challenges of sustainable construction, resource efficiency and climate change. Saint Gobain has around 170,000 employees and 1,000 manufacturing facilities across the world. The group is committed to carbon neutrality by 2050\. Saint Gobain Glass is Europe's leading manufacturer of flat glass for the construction industry, and is the second largest producer in the world. Saint Gobain Glass offers a complete range of energy efficient coated glass and insulated glazing, and its primary manufacturing facility in the United Kingdom is in Eggborough, North Yorkshire (SGGUK). This project will deliver a brand-new flat glass production furnace at SGGUK's Eggborough plant. It will improve the plant's efficiency whilst dramatically reducing energy consumption, emissions and on-going maintenance costs. The existing furnace which forms the central component of the production line is now over 21 years old. It is inefficient, costly to maintain, resource intensive and presents on-going health and safety challenges. Saint Gobain Glass has designed an entirely new furnace and production line component replacements utilising the very latest technological advances, including company-developed processes covered by patents. The main area of focus of activity will be the furnace, as it is the most energy intensive part of the flat glass production process, where maximum benefits need to and can be achieved. The remainder of the production line, batch plant, float, annealing lehr, cutting and stacking will be upgraded to both be more efficient and to enable the higher production rates. Of particular note are the measures to minimise the heat loss through re-heating molten glass multiple times as it circulates, necessarily, through the sections of the furnace. The project will ideally commence in March 2021, subject to the completion of due diligence, and will be completed by July 2021\. Support totalling £1.4 million from the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund will enable the £35.5 million investment to proceed at the optimal scale. The project will deliver the following benefits: §Annual minimum reduction in gas consumption of 75,243 MWh, based on like for like output; §Lifetime reduction of 276,836 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (TCO2e); and, §Lifetime reduction in energy bills of £19,604,762 §Increase in daily production capacity potential by 60 tonnes of flat glass.
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