Europe’s biggest brick factory will soon start rising from the ground in the countryside just west of Leicester.
Almost £100 million is being spent on the state-of-the-art plant, capable of firing up to 180 million bricks a year when it is finally gets operational in 2022.
Forterra is replacing its existing factory at its Desford site with a vast new shed housing two massive kilns, more than doubling production.
Chief executive Stephen Harrison said the £95 million plant will be the biggest in Europe, producing enough bricks each year to build 22,500 homes.
Forterra - or at least its earlier incarnations - has been digging clay out of the ground at Desford since the mid-60s.
The first factory has been unused for the past 30-or-so-years - replaced by in the 1980s by one that can make up to 85 million bricks a year.
Demolition work is now underway at the dormant factory, and when the new one is up the current factory can be brought down.
The new plant will be used to feed the housing boom and build factories, schools and hospitals up and down the county.
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Mr Harrison said: “Housing is the biggest market for our bricks, but they go everywhere.
“We know all the big house builders and builders merchants, and supply the likes of Travis Perkins and Barratt Homes.
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“Over the coming months we will be trying to manage a massive construction project, and keep the existing plant working at the same time, while also using up space currently used for stock.
“There’s a big yard at our nearby Measham plant if we need it, but it’s going to be a juggle.”
The bigger factory will help boost revenues at the £367.5 million turnover business which listed on the London Stock Exchange three years ago.
Since then the share price has grown from £1.80 to around the £2.80-£3 mark.
Forterra has nine brick factories, including Measham, and makes around 590 million bricks a year.
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Sales are split 50:50 between bricks and concrete products.
It has around a third of the 海角视频 brick market and a third of the aerated concrete block market - notably through its lightweight Thermalite block, the leading brand in that sector.
That makes it the second biggest brick maker in Britain behind Ibstock, based just up the road in north west Leicestershire.
As well as gaining recent planning permission for the new build - subject to a handful of conditions - Forterra also has permission to extend its clay quarry at Desford, to the other side of Heath Road, which runs parallel to the site.
It currently digs up 60,000 tonnes of fresh clay twice a year.
Mr Harrison said: “Right now there are about 17 years of reserves, and the extended planning consent effectively doubles that.
“Those added reserves underpin the investment.”
He said the new factory will be more efficient and cleaner that the current one - which can fire up to 300,000 bricks at a time - with improved mechanisation and robotics to speed things up and cut out delays.
While it will only add a handful of extra jobs, he said there will be no redundancies among the 100 or so people working there, with opportunities for those that need it to retrain.
He said: “This project is about protecting jobs, not taking jobs away.”
Right now Forterra is benefitting from ongoing growth in house building, with brick sales volumes “modestly ahead of last year”.
Year-on-year revenues were up almost 8 per cent in the first four months of the year on the back of 11 per cent growth last year.
Pre-tax profits last year were up more than 9 per cent at £64.8 million.
It all comes at a cost.
But despite the huge amounts of gas required to reach the 1,090 C needed to fire the bricks, Mr Harrison insists bricks and blocks are the best way to build Britain’s homes.
He said: “Of course there is energy used in firing the clay, but these bricks will be around for a long time.
“If you build a house out of timber, like they do in Japan, those houses last 30 years - here they last 100 years.
“The wooden windows might need to be replaced, but a 100-year-old house looks as good as new.
“There is a fair bit of carbon produced when the brick is fired, but there is also less maintenance required for the finished product.
“In recent years brick plants have tended to be bigger - Measham can make 100 million bricks per annum - because bigger kilns are more efficient, and we will also in due course be looking at using renewables on the site.”