Viglacera visit, touring the UK’s factories and training facilities in building products

It’s been a very enjoyable few days hosting the a delegation from Viglacera, Vietnam on a study visit study visit. As well as the head of HR, we had four directors from the R&D division – who are also factory managers and part time lecturers at the Viglacera Vocational College, resulting in a lively and technical Q&A session.

We focussed on areas of the business which Viglacera would find most useful, including factory tours and and museums:

- Hanson’s Brick factory in Measham: We were given a very informative factory tour, as well as a discussion informative insight and discussion on the skills work Proskills are delivering within their doing in the building products division.

- Marley Eternit (Concrete Tiles) in Burton on Trent: This included a factory tour and a visit to the Marley Training School and museum. Ian Aspley, Chairman of Proskills board and a former MD of Marley Training accompanied the tour giving sharing his insights and knowledge.

- Johnsons Tiles in Stoke in Trent: Another A great factory tour along with a detailed discussion on training with the site managers and training staff from Stoke on Trent College.

- Ibstock Bricks: This is a virtually brand new brick factory in Chesterton, Stoke. It is really is an amazing operation and impressive facility giving rise to many questions about supporting staff development and raising skill levels.

- On the final day we had a visit and tour to Pilkington Glass in St Helens which is, another impressive facility. which the The delegates found to be very informative and interesting especially as Viglacera own a Joint Stock Company producing Float Glass as part of the NSG Group.

The visiting group delegates were very enthusiastic about the technical discussions they had and they are very much looking to applying everything back home with the help Proskills and our industrial partners. We were very pleased to see that they took away a substantial amount of knowledge and are looking forward to helping them apply it in Vietnam.Our whistle-stop tour of relevant business sites was aimed at demonstrating the UK training and skills structure, with a particular emphasis on vocational skills and how these are delivered in a robust way within the workplace.