Cape Brick has developed a reputation for being at the forefront of manufacturing high quality concrete products from predominantly recycled crushed aggregates (RCA). At its Cape Town plant Cape Brick uses manufacturing equipment supplied by Pan Mixers South Africa (PMSA), a leading supplier of concrete manufacturing machinery and technology in Africa.
Cape Brick managing director Anthony Gracie says that the company’s range of concrete bricks and blocks contain, on average, 70% recycled materials, and its wet cast products contain 20% recycled materials. The recycled materials are sourced mainly from demolition and scrap concrete.
“Cape Brick uses about 70 000 tonnes of recycled material annually to make its masonry products. This equates to about 10% of Cape Town's total recycled building waste materials, placing the company at the forefront of recycling in the Western Cape manufacturing industry,” Gracie says.
He points out that the products’ embodied energy – a calculated total of energy used during the product lifecycle – is about half that of a standard concrete brick. “The recycling and reuse of building rubble in the manufacture of concrete masonry products eases the pressure on landfill sites. It also means that a lesser proportion of virgin materials, such as sand and stone, have to be quarried – so it reduces the mining impact on the environment.”
Cape Brick’s RCA-based concrete bricks and blocks are manufactured using a PMSA VB4X brick and block machine and a P1000 pan mixer.
Despite the fact that recycled materials are used in the manufacturing of Cape Brick products, Gracie emphasises that quality is never compromised. “All our concrete bricks and blocks conform to SANS 1215 standards and our wet cast paving products comply with the abrasion standard contained in SANS 1058. What’s more, the quality of the RCA is superior to that of the quarried materials available at a similar price, so as well as having less environmental impact, the products offer greater value-for-money,” he says.
Gracie notes that the reliability of the production equipment and after-sales support provided by PMSA is important in ensuring that Cape Brick is able to maintain its high standards of quality on a consistent basis. “PMSA has been a reliable equipment supplier to Cape Brick for more than 15 years and provides us with the peace of mind that we are always guaranteed access to excellent technical support and after-sales service, should we require it.”
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