The growing infrastructure sector requires timely availability of bricks and blocks for timely completion of projects. Traditional brick manufacturers are facing issues of labour shortage and are unable to meet demand timely. Secondly, the rising preference for bricks made through mechanized processes is because the characteristics of fire kiln made bricks have issues of porosity and improper baking due to temperature variations.
Says Panchal, “Besides the supply and quality-related issues in clay burnt bricks, the Government’s thrust on affordable housing is also spurring demand for the new bricks. State Governments are involving private participation in the construction of affordable housing. Andhra Pradesh, for instance, has made close to 70% land available for affordable housing projects. We are at finalization stage of Large scale Block making plants to the tune 2,00,000 Blocks per day.
New legislations by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for core infrastructure projects like Power, Steel, and other manufacturing and utility segments has been driving demand for mechanized brick making machines. Thermal power plants have been directed to convert the residual fly ash into bricks/Blocks and steel plants to convert their waste slag into Bricks/Blocks.
Says Panchal, “Neptune’s Building Materials Division’s Brick and Block making machines have advanced technologies and our highly skilled design team uses latest version CAD CAM software. Our inhouse design capabilities and engineering inputs for the hardware in the mechanical and electrical interfaces, along with software from technology partners like Supertec, Italy and Frima, Germany, enables us to provide compact plants with a production capacity of up to 2,00,000 bricks per day. These plants are designed for contractors that undertake construction of sideways and footpaths that require concrete paved blocks.”
He adds, “Our higher capacity fully automated robotic plants are in the range 50,000-upto 2,00,000 bricks per day. These plants can do gripping, picking and stacking of the bricks after manufacturing. The specially designed software makes it possible to handle such high volume of bricks produced, which cannot be handled manually. These big plants are for steel and power plants and for infrastructure projects. We have supplied these bigger capacity plants to JSPL, NTPC for converting 100% of their fly ash to bricks.” Our New customer ILFS are collectors of Concrete demolitions of materials to convert them to Bricks/Blocks.
Neptune’s installation of 700 plants pan India are producing flat bricks, mortars, concrete blocks, concrete paving blocks, dry mix mortars and CSE blocks. Informs Panchal, “To make our plants suitable for varied applications, we have entered into a tie-up with a construction demolition waste management company. We will be collecting the demolition waste from them and converting it into blocks as a turnkey project.”
Neptune supports its plants with a full-fledged service team and service engineers across the country. Though the company’s competence lies in manufacturing, it also undertakes their erection, installation, and commissioning. “This is to extend our end-to-end capabilities, and provide complete EPC turnkey solutions for companies requiring larger plants,” says Panchal.
