The first bricks have been fired and delivered from Europe’s biggest brick plant.
The new £95 million Forterra factory has opened on the site of its manufacturing facility in Desford, near Leicester.
Forterra, which began work on the new factory in 2020, said it will be capable of firing up to 185 million bricks a year – enough to build 24,000 homes.
As well as being the biggest, the Northamptonshire-based business said it was also the most efficient brick factory in the UK and Europe.
The first delivery saw 23,740 red bricks packed onto Forterra’s fuel-saving Euro 6 fleet of trucks, en route for housebuilder Taylor Wimpey.
Once the Desford factory opens to full operating capacity, it will be able to despatch more than 1,000 packs of bricks per day – while using around 25 per cent less carbon dioxide than the factory it replaces.
Forterra – or at least its earlier incarnations – has been digging clay out of the ground at Desford since the mid-60s.
Chief executive Neil Ash said: “With ambitious ESG [environmental, social and governance] targets for 2030, we know that sustainability has to be approached holistically, which is why at Desford we’ve incorporated advanced sustainability mechanisms across all aspects of production, packaging, and delivery.
“The factory’s impressive production capacity will ensure we can manufacture hundreds of millions of bricks per year using a process that has been streamlined to be efficient and sustainable while satisfying the ongoing demands of our customers.
“The Desford factory complements several other investments and developments Forterra have made over the past year, such as a solar farm, which will render 70 per cent of our power usage electric by 2025; a new eco-fleet of trucks, which will reduce our transportation emissions; and new packaging solutions, which place us a step closer to our goal of attaining a 50 per cent reduction in single-use plastics by 2025.
“We’re delighted that the first load of bricks has been dispatched, and eagerly await the full factory opening in May.”
Forterra employs around 1,800 people in the UK, across 17 manufacturing facilities.
