Key point of contact

Naomi Smith has been appointed as the new business development manager responsible for driving membership of Glass Futures and the Global Centre of Excellence.

This new role was created to provide a key point of contact between the innovations team and members, and will help define and drive strategic activities to grow the membership base and ensure the needs of current members are fulfilled.

Naomi started her career as a sales representative with Ovako, selling steel into the UK market, working in collaboration with the design, engineering and manufacturing teams to produce parts and equipment serving multiple industries.

She has also worked within the testing inspection and certification (TIC) sector with Element Materials Technology, where she ran marketing campaigns and strategies to bring new products and services to market.

The not-for-profit research and technology organisation has appointed 17 members of staff and secondees in key managerial roles in a phased ramping up of appointments including recent positions in engineering, communications and marketing. The most recent recruits are all working remotely but there is hope that a temporary head office can be established in St Helens’ in the near future* acting as the operational HQ to spearhead the planned 165,000ft² facility on the 14-acre site, adjacent to St Helens’ Rugby League ‘Totally Wicked’ stadium.

The facility will be centred around a 30 tonne/day low carbon demonstration furnace creating the world’s first openly accessible, multi-disciplinary glass melting facility with capability for research and development trials to demonstrate new manufacturing processes, products and approaches to improve efficiencies while decarbonising the glass industry and providing a world class training facility for the current and future workforce.

In total, the St Helens’ site is expected to create around 80 skilled jobs directly, along with hundreds of indirect employment opportunities.