Brick makers build on their solid foundation

A new £55 million Leicestershire factory will make more than 100 million bricks a year.

Eclipse, Ibstock Brick’s new brickyard, which began manufacturing in April, was officially opened by Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, James Brokenshire. The state-of-the-art plant opened earlier this year but is now ramping up its capacity to help meet the demand for the 300,000 homes the Government wants building each year.

Conservative North West Leicestershire MP Andrew Bridgen was present at the opening. He said: “This is an amazing place. It’s the most efficient brick factory in the world and it will make enough bricks to build 15,000 houses a year.

“The new factory is in addition to the old one, which is still producing.

“This will reduce our need to import bricks from abroad as we work to meet housing demand.”

The UK has an estimated shortfall of 450 million bricks a year being met by European imports. The new factory, which covers an area the size of six football pitches, has created 50 jobs.

Mr Bridgen said: “The factory has the latest robotic technology but the new jobs are good engineering

jobs, mostly in maintaining the machinery. Ibstock is famous for bricks and has been for 200 years. This factory guarantees bricks will be produced here for at least 35 years.”

The factory includes construction of a new production building which houses the brick manufacturing and processing plant, a packaging area and other ancillary plant, including flue stack and associated flue gas abatement equipment and a new clay preparation building.

It also has an additional stockyard area to store packaged bricks, and a dedicated area for HGV parking and sheeting. Greenhouse gas emissions and energy

consumption will be significantly lower per 100 million bricks made in comparison to existing plants.

Water used during manufacturing will be recycled where possible, while the kilns are powered by natural gas and excess heat produced from the kiln firing will be reused during the brick drying process.

To reduce transportation by lorries to the site, clay will be transported from the on-site quarry via a conveyor belt into the clay preparation building and manufacturing facility.