Boral Bricks to temporarily cease production in Vigo County, idling 18

howard.greninger@tribstar.com

TERRE HAUTE - Boral Bricks announced Tuesday it is temporarily ceasing production effective Feb. 26 at its southern Vigo County plant, the largest brick manufacturing facility in the nation.

Eighteen workers will be laid off and will be recalled when business conditions improve or when inventory levels are decreased, said Greg Camp, plant manager.

The workers will receive up to two months of full-coverage insurance while laid off. After two months, the employees must pay their portion of insurance and can continue to do that for up to a year, Camp said.

"We hope it doesn't take that long to get back into production," Camp said.

Eight people will remain on the plant to continue to ship out bricks already produced at the plant.

"We're keeping our supervisor staff and three hourly employees. They will be out on the yard loading trucks. Shipping will keep running. We filled the yard up so much that we don't have any place to put bricks," Camp said.

Camp said a downturn in the housing industry led to the stoppage at the Vigo County plant. "The only time I have seen it like this was during the Carter administration back in the 1980s and I was just a kid. My dad worked for General Shale back then," he said.

Boral Bricks officially opened its approximately $58 million, 295,000-square-foot facility last March 13. The plant uses methane gas from a nearby landfill to make it energy-efficient and reduce its consumption of natural gas. It is the second Boral Brick plant to use such an energy source. The first is in Union City, Okla.

The brick plant was to employ 50 full-time workers and produce 120 million bricks per year - enough for 8,300 all-brick houses, a capacity Boral Bricks said makes the facility the largest in the United States.

"We never got to go to two shifts," Camp said. "We have run half-speed because of what we have seen in the economy. I could not put the other personnel on. We filled the yard running half-speed and never stretched our legs to run at 120 million bricks a year," Camp said.

The brick plant can be put back into production within a few days when needed, but the plant already has 36 million bricks in storage, Camp said.

"When we were shipping good, that was a three- to four-month supply, but lately we have been averaging around a million and a half bricks a month," Camp said. "That is quite a downturn."