VietNamNet Bridge – Unfired bricks, or lightweight concrete bricks, are considered a kind of “green material,” friendly to the environment which have been encouraged to use. However, the new material manufacturers have been facing a lot of difficulties when marketing the products.

Supplies ready

After two years of building and running on a trial basis, the Aerated Autoclaved Concrete factory of Tan Ky Nguyen Joint Stock Company in Long An province churned out the first batch of bricks in early 2011. With the investment capital in the first phase of 160 billion dong, the factory has the designed capacity of 450,000 cubic meters per annum and 350 standard bricks.

However, Tan Ky Nguyen has to cope with a lot of difficulties, as the market demand is much weaker than expected. Phan Hoai Thanh, General Director of Tan Ky Nguyen, said that the factory is now running at just ¼ of the designed capacity.

He went on to say that weak demand is the common problem for other similar manufacturers. Most of the factories are using 20-30 percent of the designed capacity only.

In Dong Nai province, the factory of Vuong Hai Company, which has the designed capacity of 100,000 cubic meters a year, has been running at 1/5 of the designed capacity over the last two years.

Deputy Director of Vuong Hai said that the company could sell only 15,000 cubic meters in the whole year 2011, a modest volume if compared with the factory’s capacity.

According to the Vietnam Building Material Association, Vietnam would need 42 billion standard fired clay bricks for the strategy on building material development by 2020.

It is estimated that 330 billion bricks would be churned out from now to 2020, which would consume 500 million cubic meters of clay. This means that 25,000 hectares of agricultural land would disappear in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, the production would consume 40 million tons of coal and discharge 148 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Therefore, the government in April 2010 announced the program on developing unfired building materials which would gradually replace fired clay bricks. Under the program, 40 percent of building material output by 2020 would be unfired materials.

The government also decided that lightweight concrete bricks must be used for the construction buildings with 9 or more stories.

Experts have said that the currently operational factories like Tan Ky Nguyen’s and the factories which are under construction, the amount of unfired brick output would be big enough for 200 25-storey buildings with the total floor area of 6 million square meters.

Demand still weak

Despite great advantages of traditional bricks, lightweight concrete bricks have not been welcomed. It seems that the bricks could not choose the right time to hit the market. The real estate market has been frozen in the last three years.

One of the most important reasons that make people hesitant in using the new material is the high price of unfired bricks, which is double that of normal bricks. A cubic meter of unfired bricks is priced at 1.3 million dong, while normal products can be bought at 700,000 dong per cubic meter.

Meanwhile, it will require high techniques when using the new material. Unlike fired bricks, the new material would need specialized mortar.

The lack of knowledge has also hindered the development of lightweight concrete bricks. Tran Xuan Dai Thang, General Director of Alinco, a construction design and consultancy firm, said that the investors of multi-storey construction works, that use lightweight concrete bricks, would be able to reduce the costs on stake and foundation.

Source: TBKTSG