A BOLTON-based company has announced a major boost to its plans to introduce a lightweight concrete building system throughout Britain and Ireland.

ThermoneX, owned by Kearsley-based businessman David Aulton and Irish partner, Martin Mulligan, is pioneering a Swedish invention called X-Concrete.

The technique, which uses lightweight concrete cast around blocks of polystyrene, was developed by Swedish researchers at Gothenburg University and has been used extensively in Sweden for more than 25 years.

Mr Aulton, whose company is on Chorley New Road, Bolton, said that a partnering agreement had been reached with Milbank Industries in Essex to manufacture X-Concrete for the first time in England. A purpose-built production line for the highly insulated precast wall panels has been included in Milbank's new £5 million factory in Brandon, Norfolk.

Turkington Precast at Portadown, Northern Ireland began X-Concrete production in November last year.

Mr Aulton, a former journalist whose father was a builder, said: "We are pleased to have a mainland production base. Now we will be able to meet the demand for the product in the southern half of the UK."

The X-Concrete blocks are shaped into walls, ceilings and floors before being assembled to create buildings -- often in as short a time as 48 hours. ThermoneX, founded in Ireland, will market, design and install projects using X-Concrete for basements and housing, apartments, hotels, industrial and commercial buildings.

Mr Aulton said they hoped to expand in Bolton over the next five years. He added: "We would like to build our own offices in the next few years using these products."