HẢI PHÒNG — Việt Nam lacks control over non-fired brick quality despite the large number of such bricks produced in the country over the last five year, the Ministry of Construction said.

Most of the non-fired brick manufacturing enterprises evaluate their product quality by themselves based on Chinese and Korean standards, according to Đỗ Tiến Thịnh, an expert from the Việt Nam Institute for Building Science and Technology under the construction ministry. 

Việt Nam had not developed national standards for the processes of designing, producing, inspecting and testing of non-fired bricks, he said at a conference on evaluating the first phase of a national project on increasing the production and use of non-fired bricks in Hải Phòng City last week.

His remarks were supported by a representative from the Việt Nam Concrete Association, who stressed the importance of having uniform quality standards to stabilise the non-fired bricks’ price.

According to Nguyễn Xuân Bình, vice chairman of the city’s People’s Committee, the traditional red bricks remain a consumer favourite.

Even though the unit price of non-fired bricks is higher than of red bricks, the total cost of a construction built with non-fired bricks, from the design to the construction phase, is lower than the one built with traditional bricks, he said.

Approved by the Prime Minister in 2010, the project is aimed at increasing the percentage of non-fired bricks to 40 per cent of the total number of bricks produced in the country by 2020, as well as reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emission.  

Some 250 non-fired brick production lines must be developed nationwide in order to reach the objective, said Deputy Construction Minister Trần Việt Thanh.

Five billion non-fired bricks were produced in the country last year, accounting for 24 per cent of the year’s total quantity of building materials, according to reports from the construction ministry.

The number helped save 8.5 million sq.m of clay, some 825,000 tonnes of charcoal and reduced 3.1 tonnes of CO2 emission, according to the reports.

The project has developed training programs on non-fired technologies and provided training for 350 brick manufacturers from 24 provinces and cities across the country this year.

Thái Nguyên Province, Hải Phòng City and Đà Nẵng City were selected to demonstrate the technology of vibration with hydraulic pressure in non-fired brick manufacturing. Their products have been used in several buildings. — VNS