NEW plans for a £390 million bottle-making factory earmarked for the Rassau Industrial Estate on the outskirts of Ebbw Vale have been approved by Blaenau Gwent planners.

In September last year, it was revealed that Turkish firm CiNER Glass Ltd wanted to make number of changes to the original planning permission to build a glass bottle making factory.

Planning permission was granted in June 2022 by the Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Planning Committee.

When planning permission was granted the company said it was expected that the £390 million project would create around 600 highly skilled jobs at the site, with up to 500 more jobs created during the building process.

To make the changes the company lodged a section 73 planning application with the council and an initial public consultation on the changes took place in October and November last year.

A further month-long consultation started over the Christmas holiday period after further tweaks to the plans were made, these centred on the “batch building” proposed at the site.

The tweaks included rotating the batch building by 90 degrees, with the longer elevations now facing east and west.

This change was to reduce the overall size of the service yard, reducing the overall footprint of the development.

It would also allow the relocation of the warehouse to the end of the main production buildings, forming the preferred linear layout.

A conveyor bridge structure will also be moved from the end of the building to the side.

According to planning agents Arup it is “unlikely” that the changes would create “new significant effects.”

Last year, Arup were commissioned by CiNER to change some of the “approved parameters” to the scale, height, layout, appearance, access, and landscape of the proposal.

The company also want to remove a condition which relates to Great Crested Newts as they believe they have provided “sufficient details” on this topic.

A spokesman for Blaenau Gwent said:  “The application was approved on February 1.

“The rationale behind that decision is that the impacts are now the same or less for each issue than the scheme previously consented by Planning Committee.

“The new permission is subject to the same legal agreement and conditions save that the approved plans have changed to reflect the new design and the requirement for Great Crested Newts has been omitted as it’s been proven they are not present since the original consent was issued.”