Pupils from Fernwood
Primary School in Nottingham recently had the opportunity to visit the world’s
most efficient brick factory to learn more about UK manufacturing and the
exciting, diverse and innovative career opportunities available in the
construction industry.
Ibstock, the UK’s
market leading manufacturer of clay and concrete building solutions, invited
Year 5 and Year 6 students from the school to its state-of-the-art
manufacturing facilities in Leicestershire to inspire them into thinking about
the wide range of fantastic opportunities available in British
manufacturing.
The
day included a tour of Ibstock’s Eclipse factory, a production facility that
takes 21st century British manufacturing excellence to a
new level. The site, located on an old landfill site close to its
principle source of raw materials, covers the size of six football pitches and
includes a host of innovative technologies like robotics, automation and
precision engineering to produce over 100 million bricks a year for the
housebuilding and commercial sectors.
Gareth Emmonds,
Group HR Manager at Ibstock, said: “Part of our commitment to the local
community is to inspire the next generation of talented individuals. As a
business, we are extremely passionate about recruiting and developing young
people, so we were delighted to welcome pupils and staff from Fernwood Primary
School to our Eclipse factory and head offices in Leicestershire to tell them
more about who we are and the exciting career opportunities available here.
“Ibstock has a proud
history of nearly 200 years of manufacturing and is continuously investing to
ensure we manufacture in the most innovative, sustainable and efficient way
possible. The Eclipse factory takes this to the next level. It’s a fantastic
example of UK manufacturing at its best so it was great to give pupils at
Fernwood Primary School an insight into what we do.”
Along with the
factory tour, pupils learned more about Ibstock’s heritage as well as the
varied and diverse careers available at the company, from marketing and
finance, to operational and production roles. Gareth and his team also
talked about Ibstock’s highly successful apprenticeship programme, which has
been running for over 20 years and gives people the chance to train for highly
skilled roles, gain nationally recognised qualifications and get paid while
they learn.
Other activities for
the pupils included the opportunity to look at how Ibstock is using innovative
technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) to create smart homes of the future and
the children also had the chance to build a computer with the support of Ibstock’s
IT team.
“Our head offices
and Eclipse factory in Ibstock is just one of the 38 sites across the UK that
we operate from,” continued Gareth. “We employ 2300 people nationwide and
hundreds locally in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire and are proud to be a major
employer in the area. The construction sector is such an exciting and
fast paced industry to be involved in and I hope we’ve managed to inspire some
of the pupils to think seriously about a career with us in the future.”
Simon Holroyd,
Deputy Head at Fernwood Primary School, commented: “It really was a fantastic
day that all the children enjoyed so I’d like to thank Ibstock for inviting
us. Having a major UK manufacturer on our doorstep that is pushing the
boundaries is great news for the local economy so it was great to get an
insight into their business.
“The idea was to
open the children’s eyes to the exciting world of manufacturing and
construction and talk about the different pathways into industry. Not
every pupil wants to go to university, so hearing about Ibstock’s
apprenticeship programme and the support and training their apprentices get was
fascinating for them.”
