Glass Futures has appointed Naomi Smith as its new Business Development Manager.
Ms Smith has been appointed to the role and will be responsible for driving membership of Glass Futures and its Global Centre of Excellence in St Helens, UK.
This new role will provide a key point of contact between the innovations team and members, and will help define and drive strategic activities to grow the membership base and ensure the needs of current members are fulfilled.
Ms Smith started her career selling steel into the UK market before working within the Testing Inspection and Certification (TIC) sector with Element Materials Technology.
The not-for-profit research and technology organisation (RTO) has appointed 17 members of staff and secondees in key managerial roles in a phased ramping up of appointments including recent positions in engineering, communications and marketing.
The most recent recruits are all working remotely but there is hope that a temporary Head Office can be established in St Helens’ in the near future*, acting as the operational HQ to spearhead the planned 165,000 sq. ft facility on the 14-acre site, adjacent to St Helens’ Rugby League ‘Totally Wicked’ stadium.
In total, the St Helens’ site is expected to create around 80 skilled jobs directly, along with hundreds of indirect employment opportunities.
Aston Fuller, Glass Futures’ General Manager said: “It’s great to see the Glass Futures team grow as we deliver on our promises and continue to fill positions with further plans to hire 10 roles throughout the course of this year.
“Glass Futures will be a 24/7 operation and we will need skilled engineers from all disciplines, along with a diverse range of skilled people to make up the operational support team.
“With collaboration also being a key part of the Glass Futures’ offering, we want to ensure we can deliver knowledge and resources for R&D projects to introduce scalable solutions for the benefit of, not only our members, but the whole glass industry.”
