Major backing for insulation firm by billionaire owner
● Move safeguards 160 jobs and ‘real vote of confidence in Scottish manufacturing’
The Russian owner of a Stirling-based insulation producer is injecting a multi-millionpound sum into the firm in what it says is one of the largest investments in Scottish manufacturing in recent years.
The £36.8m earmarked for Superglass’ facility at Thistle Industrial Estate in Stirling secures 160 jobs, will double annual production capacity of glass wool to 60,000 tonnes, and deliver major growth in new full-time jobs over the next 18 months.
Sergey Kolesnikov acquired the firm in 2016 through his Cyprus-based Inflection Management Corporation vehicle. The billionaire businessman is the owner of Technonicol, the largest manufacturer of construction materials in Russia and eastern Europe.
Ken Munro, chief executive of Technonicol UK, Ireland and USA, which incorporates the Superglass business, said: “Technonicol’s backing is a real vote of confidence in Scottish manufacturing, both in terms of the quality of the work we do here and the expertise of the workforce.
“It is also an important milestone in the total transformation that this business has experienced over the last three years – we have delivered a £10m improvement in profitability over this period and significant double-digit sales growth in the current year.
“By our estimations, it’s also one of the biggest single inward investments made in Scotland’s manufacturing sector for a long time.”
He also said it was an “exciting time” for the firm, which was acquired by Technonicol International in an £8.7m deal, prompting the Scottish company to leave the stock market after a troubled nine years.
Its glass wool insulation is estimated to save about 300 times the amount of energy used to manufacture it.
Munro added: “We’ve got significant growth ambitions and this investment will certainly help propel us towards achieving those goals.”
Economy secretary Keith Brown said: “This investment, and the jobs it will create, is excellent news for Stirling and for the wider Scottish economy. It rightly shows real confidence in the highly-skilled Scottish workforce.”
He also said he was “delighted” that Scottish Enterprise is supporting the project with a grant of £477,000 to deliver jobs and growth for the Stirling and Scottish economies.
Jim Watson, director of innovation and enterprise services at Scottish Enterprise, described Superglass as “an ambitious Scottish company with a strong leadership team clearly focused on its long term success”.
He added that as well as bringing new jobs and investment to Scotland, the project will “help improve efficiencies in its manufacturing processes and open up new European markets and potentially future research and development activities.”
Superglass was set up in 1987, later undergoing a management buyout, and listing on London’s Alternative Investment Market in 2007, valued at the time at more than £100m.