Into the summer with mixed feelings

Dear readers,

For ZI editors, summer regularly brings two topics to the fore. On the one hand, the bright season is the time of many conferences and events. On the other hand, around the middle of the year, the national brick associations and industries publish the previous year’s figures. This year, both lead to quite mixed feelings.

The bad news first: production and sales figures have fallen in many European markets in 2023. The causes are similiar: contracting demand for new construction and renovation, caused by increased construction interest rates combined with a lack of public investment activity and lack of regulatory changes. Detailed figures and information on the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain can be found from page 22 onwards.

The figures for the German brick and tile industry for 2023 presented by the Federal Association of the German Brick and Tile Industry are not encouraging either. In his speech at the annual meeting in Kreuth, association president Stefan Jungk rightly pointed out, however, that after every crisis there comes an upturn and that the brick and tile industry is very resilient (read more on page 46).

Part of this resilience, and this is the good news, is the active cooperation within the industry on several levels. The meeting of the Research Association of the German Brick and Tile Industry in Berlin in May was proof of this, as was the annual meeting of the European umbrella organisation Tiles and Bricks Europe in Thessaloniki. Starting on page 41, you can find out more about the topics discussed there in reviews, as well as the topics covered by career changer seminar at the Institute for Brick and Tile Research in Essen.

The extensive research activities surrounding the brick sector in Germany and their results can also be counted as quite good news, as the technical article on page 6 shows. Dr sc. nat. Anett Lipowsky, M.Sc. Jenny Götz, Dipl.-Ing. Manuela Knorr and Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Anette Müller from the Institute of Applied Building Research Weimar have tested the effectiveness of a previously uninvestigated method for separating concrete-mortar-brick mixtures. The method utilises the differences in the magnetic susceptibility of the various materials.

I wish you an entertaining and informative read.

Yours,

Victor Kapr