Wienerberger, the Austria-headquartered bricks manufacturer, intends to invest around Rs 300 crore to set up a factory at Cheyyar, Tamil Nadu. The company’s only plant in Asia which is based near Kunigal, Bengaluru in Karnataka went on stream in 2009.
The Kunigal plant produces 70,000 large, hollow bricks a day, each as big as nine regular bricks, laid out in a three x three matrix. The factory was built with an investment of Rs 250 crore and is fully robotised.
At Wienerberger, the operations are pretty hi-tech, involving analysis of the clay for chemical properties (the more alkaline, the better) and physical characteristics (size of the grains).
Other materials such as rice bran, granite slurry are added to impart weight-bearing properties. Operations such as mixing, making a dough of clay, extrusion into hollow bricks, drying and firing are all fully automated. The company also makes bricks that can just be glued together without mortar.