INTERNATIONAL CHEMICAL COMPANY CLEARLY DELIVERS THE GOODS LOCALLY

A Newport chemical company which sends its products around the world has made a rather more local delivery – to a striking glass building currently being built for future students just a few hundred metres from its back door.

The new City Campus being delivered for the University of Wales, Newport, by Willmott Dixon on the banks of the River Usk will contain some 4,775 square metres of laminated glass just on its exterior – and a key ingredient of the laminated layer comes from the Solutia chemical plant at Nash, just down the road.

Every year, the company manufactures 122,000 tonnes of chemicals which are dispatched to over 1,000 customers, many of them worldwide. About 60 per cent of everything made on site is exported to around 90 countries across the globe.

But this product has travelled a much shorter distance. In its own version of “This is the House that Jack Built”, plasticiser made at the Solutia plant goes into the company’s Saflex® interlayer used by glass manufacturing company Carey Glass to fabricate the glass, which is being installed by ABGlass, the glazing contractors for the project, as selected by Willmott Dixon, the construction company and project managers of the building.

Solutia’s Saflex interlayer has been used for more than 80 years by architects and designers to create a sound barrier in glass and thus make it a versatile building material. The protective interlayer is now found in nearly 50 percent of laminated architectural and automotive glazing applications globally.

Solutia plant manager Steve Westhead said it was extremely unusual to see the end results of their work at such close quarters.

“We make a range of chemicals here in Corporation Road which go into products such as floor coverings, varnishes and washing powders, and the plasticiser we make for Solutia’s Saflex product also goes into the laminated windscreen of cars,” he said.

“But despite the fact these products are all round us all the time, there’s something quite exciting about knowing that what we manufacture here is making a major contribution to such a landmark building. All of us who go past it day by day take a real interest in how the building is coming on!”

“It is very important that the University is able to support local industry,” said Graham Rogers, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, Newport, “and to have a specialist company of this calibre right on our doorstep is an added bonus.”

Neal Stephens, Managing Director of Willmott Dixon, said: “The City Campus building is a fantastic project to work on and will look very impressive on the bank of the river when it is completed.

“Part of our sustainability policy is to try and source local products where possible to reduce the carbon footprint of construction and to support local companies. Sourcing this product from just a few hundred metres away is probably as close as you can get.”

The target date for the completion of the City Campus building is November 2010, with the first students moving in by January 2011.

The building will be home to Newport School of Art, Media and Design and Newport Business School, and will include public exhibition space, a restaurant and café, lecture theatres, performing arts spaces, sound studios and a library.