A SUCCESSFUL St Asaph businessman is expecting to create up to 40 jobs with the launch of his new green-themed business.
Stephen Waring, founder and chief executive of St Asaph based GreenThumb, which he built up from scratch to become the UK’s largest lawn care company, has spent the last three years investing more than half a million pounds developing Brick Plus, which look and feel like real bricks but is not a structural product. Made to cover external wall insulation while preserving the appearance of older brick properties, Brick Plus offers an alternative to rendering brick houses after external insulation has been applied and will be sold through his company Monolith UK.
MonolithUK, which has already created ten research and development jobs, has moved into a 13,000 sq ft hi-tech Welsh Government unit on St Asaph Business Park to continue R&D operations and to manufacture Brick Plus.
Stephen Waring said the potential market for Brick Plus was significant as hundreds of thousands of older properties do not have cavity walls and cannot benefit from cavity wall insulation.
He believes Brick Plus will be an ideal product for use under the Green Deal, a UK Government initiative due next autumn and geared to make homes cheaper to run and warmer.
“GreenThumb is already one of the premier franchising companies in the UK with more than 200 franchise operations and we would use this experience and expertise to franchise the Brick Plus system from 2013,” added Mr Waring.
“This in turn will provide employment opportunities that could provide hundreds of new jobs in Wales alone, while I anticipate we will create up to forty new direct jobs.”