IN Brief:
- Encirc is investing more than £700,000 over three years in workforce development at Derrylin.
- Invest NI has offered £157,200 towards training covering engineering, digital skills, alternative fuels, and leadership.
- The programme will prepare employees for manufacturing technologies associated with Encirc's 2030 decarbonisation plans.
Encirc is investing more than £700,000 over three years in workforce development at its Derrylin manufacturing site in County Fermanagh, linking engineering, digital, and leadership training to technologies expected to support lower carbon glass production.
The programme covers specialist engineering skills for low carbon technologies and alternative fuels, digital and data capability, artificial intelligence awareness, leadership development, and wider professional training. Invest Northern Ireland has offered £157,200 towards the work, following an earlier period of supported workforce development at Derrylin between 2023 and 2026.
Encirc manufactures glass containers and provides beverage filling, warehousing, and logistics services for food and drink customers. Part of the Vidrala group, the business produces around three billion glass containers annually across its operations, so changes to furnace energy, automation, process control, inspection, and handling have to be supported by production teams capable of operating and maintaining increasingly complex equipment.
The investment includes Encirc’s One Horizon Programme, a continuous professional development initiative focused on leadership capability and business transformation. Employees will also undertake engineering and technical training associated with alternative fuels and lower carbon production systems as the company develops its approach to reducing fossil fuel use.
Container glass production is difficult to decarbonise because melting requires continuous operation at high temperatures. Furnaces are long life assets, shutdowns are costly, and changes to fuel or furnace configuration can affect combustion control, refractory life, emissions, glass chemistry, product quality, and plant reliability.
Encirc managing director Sean Murphy said the industry must continue developing skills required for “new technologies, alternative fuels and future ways of working”. The technical programme gives that objective a plant level dimension, with operators and engineers expected to adapt alongside the equipment being introduced.
Derrylin has formed part of Encirc’s manufacturing footprint since the late 1990s, with repeated investment in furnace and production technology. More recent development has extended into circular energy concepts, including the company’s BioNet proposal, which is intended to support a transition away from fossil fuels through a wider regional bioeconomy model.
Alternative energy changes the skills profile of a conventional glass operation. Combustion engineers and furnace operators need to understand the behaviour of different fuels, while maintenance teams are dealing with additional instrumentation, automation, electrical systems, and data. Production managers must make those changes without losing control of output, colour consistency, defect rates, forming performance, or customer specifications.
The digital part of the programme reflects the same change. Process data already underpins furnace condition monitoring, temperature control, forming machine performance, inspection, and maintenance. Additional analytical and artificial intelligence capability could support those functions, although useful deployment will depend on production teams being able to distinguish a credible process signal from a poor recommendation generated from incomplete or unsuitable data.
Encirc’s position in the beverage supply chain adds further operational complexity. Glass manufacture sits alongside filling, storage, and logistics, so an interruption in one area can quickly affect another. Furnace output influences container availability, container quality affects filling efficiency, and production planning has to align manufacturing schedules with warehouse and distribution capacity.
Workforce development therefore forms part of capacity resilience as well as decarbonisation. A continuously operated plant moving towards unfamiliar fuels or new electrical and digital systems cannot afford a prolonged gap between equipment installation and operational competence.
The skills requirement also extends into maintenance planning and fault response. Alternative fuel systems, upgraded controls, and more heavily instrumented production lines can change the failure modes that engineering teams encounter, while faster diagnosis becomes more important on furnaces and forming equipment that are expected to run continuously. Training before commissioning gives sites a better chance of resolving early operating issues without relying entirely on external specialists.
The investment also illustrates an element of industrial decarbonisation that is easily obscured by headline capital expenditure. New furnaces, fuel systems, energy projects, and controls require engineers, operators, supervisors, and managers who understand how to use them without compromising safety, quality, or throughput.
Encirc’s 2030 objectives will ultimately depend on physical changes to the energy and production system, but the £700,000 programme is intended to build the technical capability needed before those assets are expected to operate at industrial scale. At Derrylin, workforce readiness is being treated as part of the manufacturing investment rather than an activity that follows it.
