2016 has been a year of new product developments within our Concrete Products business.  Driven by our global “grow the pie” strategy the team are always looking for new ways to provide solutions to customers. Their first new product was Ready Brick facing range now a direct competitor to clay bricks.  Ready Brick was developed at West Calder by a team of operational, technical and commercial people working together to bring the idea to reality.  We now have a range of colours available and a number of bulk orders in place with Persimmon Homes.  The success of Ready Brick to date is only a fraction of the potential available in the market.

The second new product this year was their foundation block made at Hyndford.  Our entry into this range has been sparked by the lack of aerated blocks available in the market.  Thanks to some work by Kevin Roy we have been able to secure the supply of our lightweight foundation block to Persimmon Homes.  The low unit weight of less than 20kgs ensure that from a manual handling perspective the blocks are able to be placed by one operative.   Our Northern Sales Team are now able to go out to the market and present our offering to other customers.

Ready Brick, in particular, has attracted attention from our global colleagues as it is adding some great numbers our OCF figures.  Such is the success of the Ready Brick model the CEMEX Research Group are keen to license it to other CEMEX businesses around the world.