Brickmaker building strong base

By Dita De Boni

The beauty of turning clay and water into over 40 styles and colours of solid brick is a process understood by few but cherished by Nick Pezet.

From muddy clay pits, through a scorching hot kiln to homes striving for both rustic charm and modern elegance, Mr Pezet sees nothing less than artistry at work.

The challenge to the modern brickmaker, he says, is to make this most earthy of materials relevant and attractive to the modern consumer.

Mr Pezet is operations and sales manager at New Zealand's largest brick manufacturer, Monier.

He was brought to this country 21/2 years ago from Redland Bricks in London to make the company's New Lynn plant more automated, streamline staff and management practices and refocus marketing.

Monier Bricks, the larger part of Monier Clay Bricks and Pavers, is part of the Australian CSR group of companies.

Despite the long history of brick in New Zealand, its popularity has waxed and waned with fashion.

While early settlers built brick homes to protect themselves from the vagaries of the climate, bricks are now sold as an increasingly fashion-conscious cladding material.

Brick has always competed with wood for the attentions of home-builders and Monier has had a battle to hold on to market share.

Variations on the brick theme, such as concrete bricks and stone cladding, have also caused clay brick profits to dip and climb as fads rocked the building industry in the last two decades.

A huge influx of Australian bricks brought in when tariffs fell about six years ago caused further pressure.

Mr Pezet says local brickworks have traditionally had 30 to 40 per cent higher costs than Australian manufacturers.

They struggle to maintain any type of margin when a profitable 80c retail brick is slashed to under 65c to compete.

But the Australian influx had a bonus for Monier - the market increased steadily from 1996 due to the competition.

From just 25 per cent six years ago, bricks now make up almost 45 per cent of the cladding market.

Monier's share has held at 55 per cent, and by embracing automation, the company has cut operating costs 40 per cent.

Under Mr Pezet's lead, Monier now sells up to 30 million bricks a year and has seen steady growth in the late 1990s to current sales of $27 million.

Margins "aren't great," he says, but a continued focus on costs and a "staff effort" behind efficiencies - spurred by flat management structures - have greatly improved the profitability of the business.

"The Australians also did something very clever by coming in and targeting specific areas of the market - specific colours, specific price ranges," says Mr Pezet.

"Our point of difference has increasingly been that we will try and service the whole market and be a one-stop shop of colour."

Automation in the production process has been the key to cutting costs. One of Mr Pezet's most trouble-free workers on the factory floor, Robbie the robot, was introduced to the New Lynn site 18 months ago.

The first "human" type robot in a brickworks in Australasia has since proved a model of industry.

Robbie lifts slabs of finished bricks off the kiln cart and on to pallets before plastic wrapping them for dispatch - a procedure formerly done by eight workers - and is just one of a series of machines involved in production.

After commissioning several studies of its market, Monier has decided to introduce three new products each year to keep the range current, as well as offering value-added services such as free colour consultations.

Gone is the all-inclusive shop for trade builders the company tried about five years ago, selling a variety of bricklaying-related products.

Monier now "sticks to its knitting" says Mr Pezet, selling bricks through independent distributors, Placemakers outlets and shops in Auckland, Tauranga and Hamilton.

The product range has been refocused to reflect New Zealand's heritage and origins.

Several brick styles have been renamed to represent environments around the country, such as a red "Marlborough" brick and pink-tinted "Kaipara."

"Our research showed that New Zealanders prefer to buy Kiwi-made - although they don't like paying more for it - so the challenge was to make the bricks price-competitive with Australian product," he says.

"At the next level, we tried to understand who makes the decision to go with brick and the various other factors involved in the decisionmaking process.

"We found men tended to look at price, while women were more conscious about colour."

Regional differences are also important, says Mr Pezet.

"For example, in Auckland the most popular bricks are a creamier colour, probably driven by both fashion in housing colours and the influx of Asian peoples, who tend to prefer those hues.

"In the Bay of Plenty and Tauranga, buff blends and yellows are more popular and in Christchurch, red and brown bricks reflect a still-strong English influence."

Mr Pezet says Monier does not intend to compete with Australians on their home turf, but is "dabbling" with trial exports to Japan, with the help of parent company CSR.

Other than that, he sees plenty more scope in the domestic market now that costs have been cut and the range rejigged.

"We've set our business up to compete in the modern marketplace.

"There's been a key shift in thinking here and we can safely say we are now giving other forms of cladding, as well as overseas product, a run for its money."