Largest brick stockpile ever

Brick sales have slumped to a record low and the largest brick mountain yet seen is steadily being stacked up in manufacturers' yards, it emerged this week.

According to suppliers' forecasts, total UK brick sales this year are likely to show a year on year drop of 20%. It is predicted that just 2.8 billion bricks will be dispatched in 1995, compared to 3.5 billion last year. In 1992, 2.9 billion bricks were sold - the previous low point of the recession.

Compared with the same month a year ago, UK brick sales in July fell by 20% to 319 million and were 18% down in August at 304 million, the last recorded month.

Figures compiled by Ibstock show that the total of unsold bricks piling up in manufacturers' yards will reach 1.3 billion by the end of the year. Adjusted for 500 million flettons which have been destroyed, this is a higher total stock than the infamous brick mountain of 1992.

'Housebuilding virtually stopped in May, and we have seen no autumn pick up yet,' said Ibstock Building Products managing director, John Milham. 'It is the same story for commercial and industrial building. It is all dead.'

Last week Ibstock announced three factory closures with 92 redundancies and 500 layoffs at 10 factories, affecting more than a quarter of its UK work force. Redland is making 70 redundant, and a further round of cutbacks is expected at London Brick.

'It is very painful that so many of our colleagues will be laid off this winter,' said Milham. 'But I am convinced that moving early and decisively is what a responsible company should be doing.'

He said official figures were only just beginning to show the true extent of the downturn which has hit the construction industry since the spring this year, and blamed the crisis on the absence of a coherent national policy for construction.