A collaborative venture between VSA, VGHS and CM Vellem to take learners on a tour of the brick making plants at Makana Brick near Grahamstown. It was fascinating and fun. A big thank you to Mr Colin Meyer and the staff of Makana Brick for hosting us and making us so welcome.
The bricks are made mainly from kaolin, the white clay mined around Grahamstown. The kaolin is ground to a powder and mixed with coal dust and water and then compressed and cut into individual bricks. The bricks are dried and then fired before they can be sold.
The factory has it own kaolin mine, but also recycles old bricks (crushing them and mixing them with the kaolin) to make new ones. The two plants showed us the older and newer technologies for making bricks as well as differences in brick design between the solid bricks made in the old plant and the bricks with holes made in the modern plant.
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