Putting Wales on the path to a sustainable skills future

Ciner Glass is a family business with a proven track record of investing in our staff. Our flagship Park Cam facility in Turkey employs around 650 people and we are fully committed to ensuring all members of our team enjoy a rewarding career with us.

When establishing Park Cam, we took the decision to employ only a small percentage of our staff with previous experience in the glass industry and to focus on training and recruiting the hundreds of people needed to run the plant from the local area. In turn, we have provided local employment opportunities and established ourselves as a long-standing, trusted, and responsible employer in the area.

As a result, we are proud to have built such a strong and committed team at our Turkish facility and hope to replicate the success of this employment model as we realise our expansion plans. We believe that this model will bring huge benefits to the small industrial town of Ebbw Vale in Blaenau Gwent, South Wales, an area which has long suffered from low levels of employment.

Our plans to build a glass bottling facility in the town will bring around 600 permanent jobs to the area once the facility is up and running, notwithstanding the potential of the project to act as a catalyst for broader economic growth.

At a national level, Wales is at a critical point in its economic history as it looks to address and recover from the global economic shock of recent years and issues such as inflation, the climate and ecological emergencies and ongoing inequalities being faced across the nation. Many businesses in Wales will have felt the effects of these economic challenges, with threats of company closures rife. We feel that an investment as significant as ours will play a big part in ensuring a fairer, more sustainable future for people in Wales.

Key to this is fostering a skills-led recovery to help reinvigorate the economy by supporting the creation of good quality and secure jobs. As part of our commitment to this, we have been engaging with education and training providers at both a Higher and Further Education level to discuss possible skills and training prospects.

We are continuing our engagement in this space, hosting educational trips for groups of students, teachers, lecturers, and researchers alike to visit our factory in Turkey to learn more about the glass sector and experience what it would be like to work at Ciner Glass.

We plan for many members of our manufacturing teams to be trained at our Park Cam factory prior to them working at the new plant in Wales, giving them a unique and hands-on training experience. We are keen to offer as many opportunities as we can and share learning, cultivating people’s interest in a sustainable sector which promises significant career development opportunities.

In creating a sustainable economy, we also understand the importance of ensuring all generations are afforded opportunities to develop as the nation transitions to the industries of tomorrow. We are therefore also keen to implement programmes to re-train and upskill those looking to change careers and join a new sector.

As we develop our plans for South Wales, we are committed to investing in our staff, creating educational and development opportunities for both current and future generations, ensuring a sustainable skills future where no-one is left behind.