Consol Glass, Africa's largest glass manufacturer, has opened its new bottle manufacturing factory in Nigel, South Africa, the first phase of a planned phased development on a greenfield site of 50 hectares. Further expansions involves the addition of 4 more furnaces at the site, with a total capacity of 600,000/tpa. The glass factory currently provides 183 permanent jobs, with 30 people working shifts to operate the continuous bottle making processes. The factory, which was established in collaboration with the city of Ekurhuleni, produces clear glass for beverage markets but in the future will expand to include amber and green bottles production for food, alcohol, wine, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries in phases. Total cost of the first phase project was ZAR 1.3BN (USD 159.8M). Consol also processes waste glass at a cullet processing unit at Nigel, complementing the company's facility in Clayville, Midrand, which has a capacity of 5M bottles/day. The Nigel site was chosen for its readily available water supply, Eskom substation and Sasol natural gas pipe network. The glass factory has been designed for 2 furnaces and, in this first phase, has a 400t a day furnace and production capacity of 110,000/tpa of glass. The second phase of the project will be based on future market demand, and is expected to take about nine months for constructing and commissioning, with a cost of about ZAR 600M.
