Brian Naveken of TECO furnace design company has been named as this year’s Hotbels BTU award winner.

Mr Naveken was presented with the award at this year’s Hotbels seminar held in Lexington, Kentucky, USA.

The award recognises a person or organisation’s contribution to the glass industry.

Mr Naveken said: “I feel honoured to be given this award. I was really in respect to be included in the list of previous winners. It’s an impressive list and I am honoured to be in that list.”

Mr Naveken joined furnace design engineers TECO in 1998 and transferred to its Technical Group in 2007. He has been a Furnace Design Engineer since.

Speaking to Glass International, he paid tribute to two colleagues at TECO: Chris Hoyle and Fred Paulsen.

“They have helped me with a lot of my papers and collaborated with me. They have given me recommendations and suggestions on to how to take papers forward.”

Mr Naveken gave an hour-long presentation titled: Alternative Furnace Design: past, Present and Futureat this year’s Hotbels seminar.

The seminar is an annual event, organised by Hotwork and Fosbel. This year it included eight conference presentations delivered by a variety of glass technology suppliers and glassmakers.

In his paper Mr Naveken suggested that furnaces will increasingly be heavily boosted or all electric.

Float furnaces, which have never been boosted in the past, could be boosted by up to 2.5MW, he suggested.

He has been involved with the Hotbels seminar for 12 years and delivered seven presentations in that time.

“I like the event because there is a good mixture of people and papers and plenty of interaction with other people from the glass business. It’s small enough so you can interact with everybody by the time you leave.”

Mr Naveken is a certified Manufacturing Technologist by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and has been on the Board of Trustees for GMIC for 11 years.

In addition, he is the Chairman of the GPC Sustainability Symposium, which will be held on October 31 at the 2019 Glass Problems Conference.

Pictured: Mr Brian Naveken (centre) with the award