All the materials used in the building of our Cheshire Oaks store were carefully selected to reduce energy consumption and environmental impact, the majority came from renewable sources and even the non-renewable materials included a high percentage of recycled content.

Our roof and first floor structural decking is made up of over 1,400m³ of glulam timber, an environmentally friendly wood that not only uses 1/5 of the energy used in typical steel manufacturing and 1/10 of the concrete, but it also absorbs CO². Even better, all of the glulam timber used was 100% certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council – a first for retail. Overall, our principal contractor, Simons Group, achieved full FSC project certification with 99.5% of the timber provided coming from FSC-certified sources (TT-PRO-003615).

Cheshire Oaks was the first retail store to use Hemclad®, an innovative wall panel that creates high levels of insulation, absorbs and stores CO² – thus reducing the building’s carbon footprint – and enables a more stable internal temperature, which in turn reduces energy usage. 230 of the panels have been packed into the store’s external walls.

Other materials of interest include our floor tiles, which are completely inert, contain 40% recycled content and are wholly recyclable at the end of their life, and our ‘white roof’, which uses 100% recycled aluminum and recycled bottle glass.  

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