Technical Visit to Glass Futures
A look into the future of glass manufacturing, providing rare access to a purpose-built, industrial-scale R&D centre that mirrors operational realities.
About
Glass is found everywhere: in buildings, vehicles, electronics and packaging. It is also energy-intensive to make — and therefore a high-impact target for decarbonisation.
Glass Futures is the industry’s answer: a not-for-profit research and technology centre, its’ Global Centre of Excellence in St. Helens, UK gives manufacturers, suppliers, academics and technologists the ability to trial new fuels, processes and monitoring systems at an industrially-relevant scale. The centre brings together people, equipment and funding so the glass industry can cross the so-called “valley of death” between laboratory ideas and commercial implementation.
Discover the forefront of green manufacturing at Glass Futures’ world-class research centre in St Helens. Located within its 165,000 ft² Global Centre of Excellence. Engage with a live 30-tonne-per-day pilot furnace that leverages next-generation fuels, sensors and automation to transform glass production.
This visit offers the chance to explore advanced robotics, Industry 4.0 systems, circular-economy raw-material trials and low-carbon initiatives—all under one roof.
Meet with specialists shaping zero-carbon processes — relevant to glass, or other other energy intensive industries such as ceramics, metals manufacture.
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Continuing Professional Development
This event can contribute towards your Continuing Professional Development (CPD) hours as part of the IET's CPD monitoring scheme.
25 Feb 2026
10:00am - 12:30pm
Reasons to attend
See new technology at scale: seeing a 30 tonne per day pilot furnace, its burners, refractories, flues and heat-recovery hardware gives immediate context to scale-dependent problems (thermal gradients, refractory erosion, process dynamics).
A chance to bridge disciplines. Glassmaking touches materials, combustion, structural, electrical and software engineering. On-site demonstration projects emphasise integration challenges that are often overlooked in siloed R&D.
Practical networking and knowledge transfer. You can meet operators, process engineers, academics and suppliers — the kind of cross-pollination that turns prototypes into commercially viable retrofits or new-build designs.
Programme
Walkthrough of the centre and pilot line (including safety briefing)
Technical briefings
Q&A session with the Glass Futures Team