Brick Production in China

At present, there are thousands of hundreds of brick manufacturing plants in China, employing at least millions labours for making bricks. Most of plants are situated in rural areas, although due to high growth rates and the booming construction industry, larger plants are being built in suburban areas. Most of the rural plants are owned by successful farmer, but most employees are women, these labours are not stability and and the income is used to supplement their farm income. And the other reason is most of plants are small brick-production, the total annual capacity is less than 300,000 bricks. For the third part, the price of energy including coal, wood, oil are continuely going up, so production costs have been increased.

Thus, the brick manufcaturing industry is under threat. It is predicted that many enterprises will close in the near future. This is due to:

1. The predicted increase in the price of energy;
2. The industry's future inability to hire labor;
3. Continued use of thermally inefficient, slow kilns, which in turn ensures the continuation of inefficient material handling practices;
4. Production of low-quality bricks due to a lack of technical knowledge and inefficient kilns.

This will enable the industry to survive due to a higher profit margin.