IN Brief:
- SHED 5 provides a compliant procurement route for emerging solutions.
- VASO’s system is based on composite panels manufactured from recycled glass.
- The framework runs for three years, with suppliers awarded in January 2026.
Eco’s VASO building system, based on recycled-glass composite panels, has been appointed onto the Social Housing Emerging Disrupters (SHED) 5 framework, giving housing providers and public bodies a new route to procure the solution through established framework terms.
SHED 5 is a three-year arrangement scheduled to run from 29 January 2026 to 28 January 2029, with a published total contract value of £500m excluding VAT. The framework covers a single lot and is structured to allow participating contracting authorities to select suppliers for specific requirements, with pricing and scope agreed at call-off. Award documentation lists Eco-Genics (Holdings) Ltd among the suppliers appointed.
VASO is presented by the company as an industrialised construction system built around panels manufactured from recycled glass. The proposition sits within a broader market push towards lower-carbon building methods, with increasing interest in offsite manufacturing, repeatable assemblies, and material choices positioned to reduce embodied emissions. In practice, uptake will still turn on the usual project realities: design integration, warranty and assurance requirements, logistics, lead times, and how the system performs against programme, cost, and operational targets on real sites.
Eco has also expanded manufacturing capacity in Scotland, linking the framework appointment to its ability to scale output. Public statements from the business describe investment in a 60,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Dumfries and Galloway, with job creation forecasts tied to ramp-up over several years. The company has also referenced planned additional production lines at the Dumfries site in 2026 and 2027.
Framework appointments do not, by themselves, equate to secured projects, but they do remove a barrier for adopters by pre-establishing procurement compliance. For suppliers, the main near-term test is conversion: translating framework presence into specifications, pilot deployments, and repeat orders that demonstrate the system can be delivered reliably, in volume, and within the constraints of social and public housing programmes.
