IN the wake of dire warnings that more small house-builders are needed to fix the UK's 'broken' housing market, a Lagan Group subsidiary and the only brick production facility across Ireland has revealed a significant rise in orders for its bricks.
Kingscourt Brick says it has seen a marked increase in demand for its clay brick products, with orders rising significantly from small and medium-sized housebuilders across the UK and Ireland.
Employing 30 people in Cavan, it believes it is well positioned for the upturn in demand with the option of opening a second kiln to supply additional clay facings to customers.
The need for increased brick supply is being driven by the housing shortage and the UK Government’s target of building one million new homes by 2020, the equivalent of 200,000 homes per year. This level of construction has not been achieved in a decade.
The brick making industry in Ireland and the UK has gone through considerable change in the last decade with several factories closing during the recession and have not been reopened.
Industry experts believe that brick making capacity between Ireland and UK is now no more than 2 billion bricks a year, which represents a reduction of 30 per cent of pre-recession manufacturing capacity.
Seamus Holland, general manager at Kingscourt Brick, said: “We are delighted with levels of demand and are currently reaching full capacity with the one tunnel kiln and expect in the near future to announce the opening of the second tunnel kiln.
"We will continue to review current and forecast demand levels and when the time is right we will bring extra capacity on to the market.”
In 2015 the Lagan Group reinvested in brick manufacturing to support the upturn in the housebuilding sector in both Ireland and the UK. The factory remains the only such facility on the island of Ireland with the all island market previously being serviced by imports.
Jude Lagan, managing director of Lagan Products, added: “SME developers and independent businesses striving for growth in a challenging market are often the most affected by any shortfall in supply. Large multinational suppliers are challenged to sell high volumes of product and therefore service only national stockists.
"The majority of our customer base tends to reflect the Lagan Group business in that we are an independent, family owned company. Our strategy is to support these small to medium sized merchants to ensure supply continues to flow to meet the resurgent demand for our products.”
