Clayton Glass to invest and expand factory in Durham

Clayton Glass has announced plans for a factory expansion, with the firm saying the growth will make it likely to become the largest glass factory anywhere in the UK.

A lease renewal that was due on an adjacent section of the same building means the firm has an additional 40,000 square feet of space that has become available, meaning the Clayton can immediately consolidate the company’s plan to install an all-new and third fully automated Bystronic IGU line.

Clayton Glass is to expand its factory in Durham by investing in an all-new, third production line / Picture: Clayton Glass

Engineering Manager, Andrew Janson, said: “With the additional space running fully adjacent to the existing building, and with full height craneage it’s the simplest of transitions. Simply removing the partition wall creates full and easy access for all plant, personnel and materials, taking our overall footage to something approaching 150,000’’

Clayton Glass’ Managing Director, Ryan Green, added: “In our minds, the greatest achievement is not becoming the largest single site glass manufacturer in the UK for the sake of scale alone, but the way our team have gone about it. Turnover has more than tripled from the £7M when we acquired the business back in 2005, and such long term and consistent growth can only be achieved through genuinely valuing and understanding our customer base, and creating real partnerships with tailored business solutions’’

Commercial Director, Jason McCabe, said: “Over time I believe we’ve succeeded in changing the dynamics of a basic sealed unit from a commodity product to a wider experience. Our latest GlassTrack customer access app is just another example of this, typical of what we like to call the ‘Clayton Difference’. This approach, backed with upwards of £10M capex to create the facility and infrastructure necessary to delivery over 25,000 products to an exceptional level of reliability each week, is what I believe has made us an enduring force in the IGU industry over the past decade or more.’’

Following 15 years of successive growth, Clayton Glass firmly believes that this new production line and manufacturing space will create and consolidate a solid platform for the next generation of the company’s development, and facilitate growth and prosperity well into the future. Ryan continued: “Our mind-set now is not that we’ve made it or anything like, absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. We will carry on refining our processes, improving our service and upping efficiencies wherever we can. We will carry on our uniquely innovative approach, we will continue our technical and product development in our glass roof division, deliver improved logistics choices and IT based solutions to improve our communication and customer interface’’

“We will carry on putting the customer first, that’s never going to change.” The plans for the new expansion are predicted to cost around £1.5m in investment, and are likely to take effect from late 2019/early 2020.”