With a new sustainability manager, FLI Group is set to enhance its environmental initiatives and profitability
Trevor Snell, FLI Group Managing Director, shares some exciting developments within the company that have occurred in the last year: “We’ve moved forward significantly in terms of our sustainability approach. We are a provider of sustainable solutions – regenerating land, off site manufacturing, treating waste and reuse of water are core to our solutions. We have now appointed a Group Sustainability Manager to support all our businesses and are well on our way with our double materiality assessment (DMA) and getting ready for Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) reporting. Being headquartered in Ireland, we still abide by the reporting rules of the legislation and the commitments that the EU has made.
“Alongside the broader group-wide evolution, each of the businesses is continuing to develop opportunities in their own core markets. As a result, we’re seeing continued growth both in terms of sales and, most importantly, profitability of the businesses compared to where they were in 2023 and 2024 and we see those growth opportunities continuing. It’s different in each of the businesses, but quite a lot of the work that we do still involves the water sector in the UK. 
Growth strategies
“Ofwat recently made determinations for water companies across the UK sector. This will lead to an enormous increase in spend over the next five-year period. That is exciting, but it also brings some real challenges in terms of resource capability, scope of work, people, and embracing some of the other challenges that we see generally in the market.”
Trevor goes on to share specific details about the group’s growth strategies and the benefits that are already emerging from some key investments: “One area that we’ve been actively expanding is our precast solutions business. This is supported by the opportunities that we see not only in the water sector but also in the broader off-site manufacturing capability that the business offers.
“We’ve touched on the spending increase that will be instigated by Ofwat’s Asset Management Period 8, which will probably double the spending of the last five-year period. As a consequence, we expect there to be increasing demand for our off-site manufacturing capability in terms of water retention, water solutions, and water reservoirs.
“We’re also seeing continued growth in the data centre market in which we’re very active. The world is hungry for data storage. Some of the high-quality off-site manufactured solutions that the business has been developing are doing very well in this sector.
“Capacity increases appear to be continuing and are very strong in some of the markets where we are active, particularly the Nordics and Europe, but also now the UK. We’re seeing opportunities for those off-site manufactured solutions to continue to be embedded in that market.
Sustainability champions
“We will reach maximum capacity in our current factory probably within the next 12 months, so we’re still actively considering how we optimize capacity to continue producing products in our bespoke factory. We’re also looking at some of the other opportunities for off-site manufactured solutions; one of the emerging markets that we would identify is the offshore wind sector.
“We have some very interesting collaborations planned with businesses that are involved in the production of floating wind turbines as alternatives to anchored wind turbines,” he elaborates. “We see that as an exciting opportunity to bring our reinforced concrete manufacturing capability into a market that is just emerging.
“We still need to build new homes in the UK – the new government has continued to talk around the need for 300,000 homes to be built each and every year. VertaseFLI with its ability to develop the circular economy and re-purpose land is ideally placed to support this drive. We haven’t come across a site that we couldn’t bring back to the market.
“The new updates on the National Planning Policy Framework are focused on the continued development of brownfield land. We see our capability to support funding organizations and developers to deliver those aims as one of the cornerstones of the VertaseFLI business.”
Trevor then goes on to outline some of the recent sustainability developments that the group is pursuing: “As well as the appointment of a new sustainability manager, who will support the business in achieving its sustainability goals, FLI Group has also begun an already beneficial partnership with Future Planet, which is assisting us with the DMA process.
“Engagement with Future Planet has been really positive. We created a small working group with sustainability champions from each of the business units within the group. Then, with Future Planet and Daniel, our Sustainability Manager, we drive those plans through.
“There are a number of other initiatives that have been implemented for some time that demonstrate our absolute commitment to our sustainability work, including the brownfield and contaminated land remediation work that’s bringing challenged land back to market. We have also developed and adopted processes that facilitate the reuse of water. This means that mains water used by some of our industrial wastewater processes can be redeployed into existing factories for cleaning purposes. That’s a really strong development that we’re excited about.
“We also have solar panels on our factory to support the electricity usage within the factory, and we harvest rainwater so that it can be utilized in our production processes. To continue to push our sustainability approach, I suppose, perhaps slightly unusually, we’ve embarked on honey production within the factory. We bought some hives and populated those hives with local bees that now produce quite significant amounts of honey. When local people want a pot of honey, they’re able to come to the factory and get one, often for free. We’re trying to give a little bit back.”
Trevor concludes by outlining the group’s ambitions for the coming year: “We see 2025 as a year of continued growth both in terms of sales volume and, primarily, in terms of being sustainably profitable. That’s our goal. We’ll also continue to seek new opportunities to bring some of our innovative solutions to newer markets. 2025 will be a very exciting year.”