Product innovation and design

Brickworks partners with architects and builders to create innovative products and support the construction of highly efficient homes

Our goal is to remain Australia’s leading building products company. It is therefore critical that Brickworks continually strives to improve quality and product integrity, while investing in product innovation.

Throughout the year, Brickworks’ Australian operations formed a crossfunctional, national technical team and conducted a strategic review of Research, Development and Quality functions. The review identified opportunities for alignment and collaboration across Brickworks Building Products to help create unique products with unrivalled quality.

We have improved our monitoring and tracking of a range of quality indicators, including waste and reparations. As a result, our teams have focussed on quality projects that have shown substantial improvements in customer satisfaction.

Brickworks is a market leader in creating premium and fashionable building products. Throughout the year we released many new products to the market. Austral Bricks has now introduced new ranges of locally manufactured and imported specialty products, including new products to the Access range; Melbourne Series and San Selmo Reclaimed ranges. Innovation of products has resulted from access to new clay resources across the group. Performance optimisation has occurred through unique formulations and firing techniques, leveraging our state of the art manufacturing plants. This combination of traditional materials with new manufacturing technology has combined to deliver our unique range of new high-quality finishes.

Austral Masonry’s acquisition of Urbanstone in FY18 has significantly expanded our offering of premium stone and concrete paving products for both residential and commercial applications. This offering includes a range of formats, colours and finishes, using natural stone and stone aggregate for beautiful, tactile, durable and luxurious speciality engineered products. A further addition to our existing GB Masonry offering is the Breeze Block range in Nickel, Pewter and Porcelain stone aggregate finishes.

Case Study

SMART CORE DESIGN

Verticore is one our most efficient bricks, currently manufactured in Bellevue, WA. The double-course brick boasts a 40–45% core void and weighs an average of 4.8kg.

LAUNCH EVENTS

We hold product launch events for significant new products, such as the product launch of our new brick colours added to the Access, Melbourne Series, Metallix, Industrial and Indulgence Range; held at our new Melbourne Design Studio.

PRODUCT DESIGN

When compared to a solid clay brick, our bricks’ core patterns can reduce clay content by up to 45%, while retaining their structural integrity. The reduced clay content minimises energy requirements during manufacturing, and provides a lighter weight product which is beneficial for the wellbeing of bricklayers.

New product development and process improvement are high on our agenda. Our projects are categorised as either variation, evolution or innovation. Payback potential is considered and progress is monitored and reported monthly. During FY19, we had multiple new products under development and undertook many process improvements. Continuous improvement is central to Austral Bricks’ corporate culture. The company has a long history of investment in research and development and new technologies to improve the quality of our products and services and respond to changing consumer tastes and the needs of the construction industry. We will continue to monitor customer aspirations throughout FY20.

INNOVATION Innovation is all about embracing change. We actively reflect on ways to refine and improve our products. Our innovation is organic, not just taking on market challenges, we look for new opportunities within our business.

With vision and innovation, we maintain our leading position in the market. By investing in technology and discovery, we deliver better products and anticipate the needs of our industry as it evolves.

Industry events

IDENTIFYING FUTURE TRENDS

We hold events including the Double Talk and International Speaker Series at our Design Studios which connects industry professionals and drives innovation. These networking opportunities improve our ability to identify future trends in fashionable and sustainable building products.

Investing in innovation

FASTBRICK AUSTRALIA

In May 2019, Brickworks and FBR established a joint venture company – Fastbrick Australia Pty Ltd – to test the commercialisation of robotic bricklaying in the Australian market. Fastbrick Australia will offer Wall as a Service TM using masonry blocks developed by Brickworks and brick laying services from FBR’s robotic bricklayer “HadrianX”.