Caption: Brick offloading.
Written by David Beer on behalf of the Concrete Manufacturers Association
Concrete Manufacturers Association (CMA) member, Berts Bricks, has joined that illustrious ‘club’ of SANS-certified precast concrete producers. Its first audit, which was passed with flying colours, took place in May when the concrete brick and paver production plant at its Potchefstroom brick works were put to the test by CMACS, the CMA’s certification services arm.
The van der Merwe family have been producing clay bricks for four generations since 1939. At present they do so as Berts Bricks Potchefstroom and Molopo Bricks in Mahikeng under the leadership of Zack van der Merwe. As one of South Africa’s largest independent clay brick producers, its two factories leave a geographic footprint that covers 15% of the country’s land mass. What’s more, its products have been used in some of South Africa’s most prestigious projects including Montecasino in Johannesburg and Sun City in North West Province.
Sales director, Jacques Marais, says the combined capacity of the two factories i.e. Potchefstroom and Mahikeng, are able to accommodate the largest of contracts with ease.
“Both plants fire an extensive range of clay facing and stock bricks using the clamp kiln system which has been mechanised and leaves a very low carbon footprint.”
Production manager, Peter Geel, says the company began making cement bricks and concrete pavers in 2010 after importing a precast concrete block making plant in 2009. The plant’s concrete paver output is now SANS certified by CMACS.”
“The precast plant handles our entire cement brick range including the Cement Maxi, modular inners and stock bricks. It also produces our 50mm bevelled pavers and our 50mm cottage stone paver range, as well as our 60/80mm interlock pavers. A variety of colours can be produced on request. We also produce clay pavers which we offer in three colours.
“The original installed production capacity of our imported machine delivered an 18 second drop cycle. Through several years of innovative improvements this has been significantly improved to a consistent sub 11 second cycle. We also achieved significantly better weighing accuracy when design improvements were made to the skip aggregates weighing mechanism.
“The entire production process is fully automated and PLC controlled through a touch-screen interface.
“In house quality management processes and systems were employed to achieve SANS specifications prior to CMACS certification. We joined the CMA three years ago and the Association has helped us enormously with improvements to our quality management systems, so much so that our transition to SANS certification required little additional input,” said Geel.
Berts Bricks manages its own quality and materials testing laboratory where aggregate specification, compliance and grading are analysed. Additionally, we test for abrasion resistance, tensile splitting and compression, and water absorption, all of which are conducted in-house to ensure quality and standards compliance. Our laboratory is also a critical component in the clay-brick production process, conducting various material and energy quality tests throughout the various production processes.
Marais added that customer demand and a reliable total product quality focus was the main motivator in achieving SANS certification.
