How are bricks made?

Durable, versatile and rich in texture and colour, everywhere you look, the good old brick is a prominent building material in the UK. Whether you’re in the business of commercial developments or you’re involved in a self-build, it’s helpful to understand the interesting journey behind bricks. Here’s a typical production journey for AAB’s bricks. 

From extraction, the raw clay is transported on the Dutch waterways and stored on a clay mound in layers. At this stage, different clay types can be blended, and it is this process that determines the finished product’s appearance and performance. The team will monitor the raw materials and test drilling to ensure it meets our high-quality standards. 

Preparing clay to make bricks

Once the clay meets our standards, it is excavated and transported to our factory for pre-processing. Here, the raw clay is mixed and colouring components are added, such as lime or manganese. Water is also added to reduce dust production, and the factory's ventilation system takes any additional dust out of the environment, ensuring the working area is kept as clean as possible at all times. 

From here, the material is milled and blended. This process breaks down large lumps and ensures a smooth, consistent material. We now have a workable mixture with the right moisture content, which is then transported to the clay cellar. Ours is one of two brick factories in the Netherlands with a clay cellar, and we credit it with helping us to keep the bricks as consistent as possible. This is because the raw clay material is stored in layers before being transported to the brick press. 

What are the different brick manufacturing processes? 

If you head over to our Brick Selector and have a look at the filter, you will be able to see some of the processes for making bricks. These include stock, handmade, extruded or wirecut, tumbled and slop moulded bricks. 

Stock

These are made by mechanically pressing prepared clay into a sand-coated metal mould. A small amount of release sand becomes part of the brick, influencing its texture and colour, while removal from the mould creates subtle imperfections that give each brick a uniform yet characterful appearance.

Extruded/Wirecut

Extruded bricks are made by forcing prepared clay through an open mould to form a continuous, three-sided profile, which is then wire-cut into individual bricks. This process allows a range of finishes and produces bricks with sharper edges and defined corners, often suited to modern or large-scale architectural designs.

Handmade

Handformatic bricks are made by coating clay in sand and throwing it into a sanded stock mould, creating creases and surface variation. A second sand increases colour variation, while different throwing methods produce distinct textures. Our Rijswaard range uses a mechanical arm with pressing for a central “smile” texture, and the Sterrewaard uses belt throwing without pressing for softer textures with larger folds and greater variation.

Retro/Tumbled

Retro bricks are created by tumbling Rijswaard core range bricks in a mechanical drum, where impact softens edges, corners, and faces to achieve a reclaimed look. The process can combine up to three brick types and add white cement to introduce contrast or create a more unified tone across varying shades.

Slop Moulded

Slop-mould bricks are made by pressing water-saturated clay into metal moulds, with water acting as the release agent instead of sand. This produces an exposed clay surface with softer tones, often enhanced by an added engobe layer that introduces further colour contrast.

Drying and stoking the bricks

Once shaped, bricks are still fragile and contain a significant amount of moisture. They’re stacked and moved into drying chambers. Impressively, our drying chambers can hold over 80,000 bricks! 

This process operates continuously, seven days a week, and is fully automated. Heat released during firing is recovered and reused, while energy consumption is closely monitored to maintain high efficiency, allowing around one million bricks to be fired per cycle using relatively low amounts of gas.

Packaging and transporting the bricks 

The next stage of our brick manufacturing process is further strict quality checks. Only products meeting exact standards are packaged for delivery. Those that don’t are often recycled, crushed for aggregate or returned to the clay mix.

Bricks that are making their way to the UK undergo a further blending. This involves mixing bricks from different kiln cars or pallets before final packing. This is done to even out small natural variations in colour and tone that occur during firing. 

By blending, each pallet contains a consistent mix, so when bricks are laid on site, the finished wall looks uniform rather than patchy. This process is especially important for export markets like the UK, where bricks are often shipped long distances and expected to look consistent across large builds.

Supplying dry bricks means work can get done faster! While in our yard, the bricks are stored undercover to keep the product in good condition and avoid the green hue that bricks sometimes get when outdoors. Significant portions of the roof of this area are now covered with solar panels, supplying a significant amount of energy to the factory.  

In the final stage of the journey, bricks are securely packed on pallets and shipped directly to our customers wherever they are in the UK.