Ian Short, founder and managing director of Uni-Blinds® integral blinds manufacturer Morley Glass, has received the prestigious ‘outstanding achievement’ award in the 2024 GGP Installer Awards.
Described by the judges as “a great success story in our industry”, Ian has been the driving force in the UK’s integral blinds market since he started manufacturing premium quality units using globally renowned ScreenLine® systems 20 years ago. Today, his company, Morley Glass, is the world’s largest manufacturer of bespoke integral blinds with up to 4,000 units produced every week at its state-of-the-art factory near Leeds.
Commenting on his award, Ian said: “I’m thrilled to win this outstanding achievement award. I’d like to thank GGP and the judges for choosing me from a shortlist of amazing people and congratulate all the other winners.
“This award recognises the efforts of the whole Morley Glass team who work hard every day to do the best that they can for our customers, whether that is in the service we provide or the quality of our products. Without their dedication, enthusiasm and passion, the business would not have grown to be the success that it has, nor would we have been able to achieve what we have in our post-consumer glass recycling scheme.”
Ian founded Morley Glass in 1998, initially as a general glass processing business, before spotting an opportunity to manufacture integral blinds for the UK market in 2004. Having seen how these shading and privacy solutions had been embraced in other countries, he believed there was great potential to be unlocked here, providing that he worked with the right supply partners and offered a comprehensive package of technical and sales support for installers.
Twenty years later, Ian’s decision to partner with ScreenLine® systems company Pellini S.p.A., who pioneered the integral blind concept in Italy in the 1970s, has proved to be extremely successful. As was his decision to partner with Saint-Gobain and Glassolutions for glass, who have collaborated with Morley Glass to develop their award-winning circular economy scheme to reduce the amount of post-consumer glass going to landfill.
The IGU (insulating glass unit) recycling initiative involves Morley Glass collecting end-of-life double glazed units from its customers and crushing it into cullet. This is then used as a raw material for making new float glass by Saint-Gobain, which saves the need for millions of tonnes of virgin raw materials (mainly sand) and significantly reduces both energy-use and CO2 emissions.
The glass recycling scheme has broken new ground by clearly demonstrating how the collection and re-manufacture of post-consumer glass is not only viable but commercially advantageous. Importantly, it has also provided a model for closed-loop recycling of glass in the window industry which is now being adopted by other businesses in the sector.
