Reasons Clay Products Are Still Unpopular For Building Construction

Biodun Adedeji is the Managing Director of Ire Clay Products Limited. In this interview he highlights why despite the availability and relative affordability of clay products, they are still unpopular for building construction in the country. He says the government must reopen moribund manufacturing companies to create employment for the youth

Read excerpts below:

Despite the availability and relative affordability of clay products, they are still unpopular for building construction in the country. What is responsible for this?

Burnt brick production started in Nigeria in the early 1980s with various state governments establishing plants for its production to reduce the cost of construction. Some of the states were the old Sokoto, Ondo, Oyo, Borno, Kano, Niger, Rivers and Anambra. However, the plants experienced problems based on poor maintenance of equipment and absence of good management. Most of the companies were in the hands of civil servants or under the supervision of one of the government agencies, which slowed down critical decision-making. These problems could not be solved by the owners due to the high level of bureaucracy, corruption and lack of technical information on the equipment. All of these plants collapsed while the only surviving one is the Oregun Clay Products Limited being managed by expatriates who understood the implication of maintaining a plant with good management.

Due to the collapse of all these companies one after the other, it was difficult for customers to get the products, hence one needed to book and pay in advance for six months before you could get bricks. It then meant that the completion time of projects was very high and that rubbished whatever gains made from the use of burnt bricks. Instead of long waiting, customers have no other option than to make use of alternatives like hydra foam, sandcrete blocks and locally-made bricks from laterite.

Another factor is the huge capital requirement either to establish new plants or revive the old ones. I was nominated to chair the committee towards establishing a clay industry for Osun State in 2014. We were looking at locating it in Ipetumodu. The cost of establishing the plant was put at N3bn. The project could not progress further due to dwindling income of the state government and it was difficult to secure the interest of private investors. The implication of this is that few companies around will continue to try and satisfy the market until some of the state governments are able to copy the Ekiti model towards resuscitating their burnt brick companies.

Finally is to choose the right vendor and project team. Most of the vendors will only stop at supplying and installing the equipment. The project team must be up and doing with very high sense of responsibility. Do you know that the Ebola crisis almost stalled the project? The expatriates at a time were no more comfortable with coming to Nigeria to complete the outstanding jobs.