White River Place, St. Austell, Cornwall

Contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine
Type of works: supply and installation of Natura Plus rainscreen cladding.

White River Place, part of St. Austell’s £75 million town centre regeneration scheme, is benefiting from Marley Eternit’s Natura Plus. The development is one of the most sustainable in the country and achieved a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating.

Natura Plus is an attractive, smooth cladding panel with a natural fibre-cement finish. Its subtle textural qualities created a tough and practical rainscreen cladding solution for this high-profile development near the English Channel in Cornwall.

The pure, through-coloured core on Natura Plus allowed the Opal panels used to be easily cut on site, which enabled the contractor to quickly and easily fit the panels on the various different sized elevations.

White River Place, which has a mix of shops, restaurants and a cinema along with 69 apartments, will form the central part of transforming the centre of St. Austell in Cornwall.

Marley Eternit’s fibre-cement Natura Plus was fitted on the apartments as a rear ventilated rainscreen cladding system to enhance the performance of the building, as well as to create a visual complement to the plain rendered walls.

Rigid Phenolic insulation was fitted behind the panels on the apartments to optimise thermal performance which, along with the rear ventilated rainscreen cladding system, was a major contributory factor to White River Place achieving a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating.

David Lord, Commercial Manager at Sir Robert McAlpine, the appointed contractor, said: “From the start this has been a low-carbon development where we wanted to use materials that were not only modern and practical but also sustainable. Natural Plus met the criteria and was also very easy to fit on site for our installers.”

Natura Plus, which has a Class ‘0’ fire performance, is resistant to insects, mould growth and fungi, giving it a life expectancy of at least 50 years. It is available in nine standard colours.