Cushwa Plant Manager Jim Bohrer (left) and Director of Manufacturing Simon Whalleystand in front of the brick-setting robots.

Wisdom comes with age, as the saying goes, and Redland Brick Inc. says it has plenty of it – 135 years, in fact. Founded in 1872, the company’s Cushwa plant, located in Williamsport, Md., is said to be the oldest brick site still operating in the United States. This comes in handy for Redland’s commercial and institutional clients, which make up about 60 percent of the company’s business, says President Joe Miles.

“The name and the product have been around for so long, and that’s really an advantage on projects for institutional work like colleges and universities,” he says. “Our product line remains very consistent, so institutions can maintain their architectural integrity on campus.”

He adds that institutions typically stay with a particular brick maker for a long period of time, so Redland Brick has long-standing relationships with institutions such as the University of Maryland and University of Kentucky.

Varieties of Brick
Miles says the types of end users and the application in which the bricks are used depend on plant location. Redland currently has four plants located in South Windsor, Conn., Cheswick, Pa., and Rocky Ridge and Williamsport, Md., which is also where the company is based. However, its market range stretches from coast to coast.

“The Cushwa plant typically produces brick for commercial and high-end residential projects,” Miles notes. “Location or the history of the customer base probably has more to do with it than anything. If you’re in the Midwest, Southeast or Southwest, brick is the traditional building product. [When] you get up into New England, where colonial architecture used more wood, the brick preference for residential siding is probably lower.”

Both of Redland’s Maryland plants produce molded bricks. The Cushwa plant also makes genuine handmade bricks. Handmade bricks are made the same way they have been for centuries – placing shale and clay soft mud by hand into a box to form it, dumping it out, and then drying and firing it. “The only difference is now they’re fired in modern tunnel kilns, and, of course, quality control is much better than in the old days,” Miles adds. Molded bricks are made the same way, but instead of human hands, they’re machine manufactured.

Its Cheswick and South Windsor plants produce extruded brick, which Miles likens to squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. “The mud coming out is much denser,” he notes. “In a fully-automated process, the bricks are cut and stacked, and then put through a drier and kiln.”

Times are Changing
Miles says it would be difficult to compete today if Redland didn’t have upgrades in technology. “A lot of plants in the industry have kilns that are fired by natural gas,” he says. “With the price in natural gas as it is today – if you don’t have a modern kiln that’s very fuel-efficient – it’s tough to stay in business. Our future kilns will probably be designed to run on alternative energy sources such as synthetic gas or biofuels.”

The brick industry is striving to become more environmentally conscious. “What we know now is there’s a green movement, and brick has a pretty good story to tell,” he asserts. “First of all, we typically use shale, so we can reclaim the land where brick is quarried out of the ground and turn it into a wildlife habitat. We always reclaim the land because shale isn’t good for farmland anyway. Oftentimes, we’ll put the land back in better shape than it was before.”

Miles says brick is an economical product that will last for centuries and can also be recycled, whereas its building materials competitors make commodities that may not stand the test of time. “Who knows how long vinyl siding will last,” he asserts. “It’s plastic. Now, you’ve got cement siding competing against vinyl. You’ve got both natural stone and synthetic stone; those are major competitors. There’s also a trend now on custom homes, where they mix a lot of siding products. You might have brick and stone or brick and siding; that’s a trend on the residential side. On the commercial side, we’ve always had competitive wall products.”

Overcoming Challenges
Miles says all building materials manufacturers feel the effects of globalization and the industry consolidation that has come with it. For brick, in particular, “20 years ago, there were probably over 100 different manufacturers,” Miles says. “Now, that number is shrinking as the larger international companies have taken a majority share of the U.S. brick market. If you don’t invest in your plants, you can’t compete.”

Despite the assurance of capital and reputation, the brick industry as a whole might soon be in a competitive disadvantage. Brick is one of the last building products that is still being installed the same way is has for centuries, Miles says. “In the colonial days, there was an abundance of labor, and all you needed was dirt and you could make bricks on-site,” he adds. “We’ve got to come up with more economical ways for faster installation.”