Traditional Brick & Stone is navigating market changes and preparing for increased demand 

For over 21 years, Traditional Brick & Stone (TBS) has provided high-quality facing bricks, clay pavers, and cast stone to their customers across the UK and Ireland. With a unique and extensive portfolio, the company’s products have been used to create or restore some of the UK’s most iconic buildings, including the historic rebuild of Borough Yards in London. 

With brick stocking depots in Tilbury, Harwich and Hull, TBS operates from these strategic locations to ensure that their large stockholding is available for nationwide distribution or direct to their Irish customers from the factory. The business also operates a samples distribution centre in Bury St Edmunds to ensure that prospective customers receive brick panels quickly for consideration. Whether the project is restoring a period property, building a private residence, or undertaking a public/commercial scheme, TBS is able to provide high-quality products alongside dedicated customer service support, based in Rugeley, Staffordshire. 

As part of TBS Holdings Ltd, the business can leverage relationships with its sister companies to offer additional services, such as brick slips and cut and bonded specials through TBS Cladding Solutions Ltd or solar PV panels through TBS Specialist Products Ltd. Having spoken with the company around 18 months ago, the team at Construction & Civil Engineering are keen to catch up with TBS to learn more about its latest development. To do so, we sit down with Trevor Robinson and Daniel Sims, TBS Holdings Group Directors, and Graham Boyd, Sales Director at TBS Brick. 

“The last four years have been extremely interesting from a brick volume point of view, especially as we navigated the dual challenges of Brexit and Covid-19 in 2020,” Graham opens. “Following the pandemic, we saw some of our busiest times until the market began to contract at the beginning of 2023, and we recognised the need to address these changes with our staff. The first thing we did was reassure our employees that their jobs were safe; unlike other suppliers, we don’t shed jobs or close factories when the market contracts but instead, we support our staff through difficult times in preparation for when the market is inevitably restored.” 

Trevor confirms: “Our industry is very cyclical, and to us, supporting and retaining staff epitomises the ethos of TBS. Although we’ve tightened our belt over the last two years, we’ve retained all our staff and successfully balanced the tipping point of our brick inventory. We also pride ourselves on consistency, delivering the same high standards of customer service regardless of the market dynamics. This means that our customers, manufacturing partners, and distribution network know exactly what to expect when dealing with TBS and they can be reassured that they will always receive excellent products and service.”  

Prestigious projects 

Turning to recent projects, Graham is keen to discuss the company’s involvement with Borough Yards, which is considered London’s most exciting cultural and retail focused regeneration. As a new destination to shop, eat, work, and play, Borough Yards is located next to the famous Borough Market, and is based in and around a series of restored railway arches.  

“We worked closely with the architects, SPPARC, Wates Construction, N R Taylor and Lesterose on the Borough Yards project, which has since won several prestigious awards at both national and international levels,” Graham elaborates. “SPPARC’s vision was to rejuvenate part of South London’s Victorian railway heritage by repurposing 8500 square meters of existing railway arches, blending heritage with contemporary design. The project has recently been awarded the 2024 Triennial Award for Excellence in Brickwork by the Worshipful Company of Tylers and Bricklayers. 

“The result is raw-brick, cathedral-like spaces aimed at a new generation of visitors. This is where TBS’ strengths came through, as the project required a significant volume of bricks, including special shapes and unusual detailing. There is a perception that European brick manufacturers do not specialise in special shaped bricks, but we partnered with Steenfabriek Klinkers to produce some large, complicated specials that were incorporated into lightweight glass reinforced concrete (GRC) panels. Borough Yards has been a platform for a plethora of other projects that also require special shapes, such as the redevelopment of one of the stands at Old Trafford Cricket Ground and the new Spelthorne Leisure Centre.”  

Plans in the pipeline 

As our conversation continues, we discuss the company’s brick slips operation. “We’re heavily involved with many precast projects, which often require tight size tolerances and demanding site schedules,” Daniel explains. “Another product range we offer is prefabricated brick specials, and we can provide detailed solutions to our customers. Having experienced success in this field, and with house building anticipated to rise across the UK, we plan to double the size of our brick slip operation in 2025.” 

Graham continues: “Our ability to offer a range of linear bricks, along with purpose-made and cut slips, played a key role in one of our recent projects at 225 City Road in Hackney. This project required a high degree of precast solutions and cut slips, and we worked closely with all parties to achieve the random brick bond detail required for the façade. The City Road project was challenging given the large number of brick sizes required and we are delighted to see how fantastic the project looked when completed.” The product used was one of the new Eco bricks made at the Nelissen factory, and this N70 product reduces the carbon used during the manufacturing process whilst maximising the payload on deliveries, given the reduced thickness and width of the bricks supplied. 

With increased market demand on the horizon, we ask how TBS is preparing to meet predicted volumes. “Over the last 21 years, we have developed strong relationships with our suppliers, who recognise that we are intrinsically linked to their business; we effectively tell them what to produce, and when,” Trevor says. “Across our import terminals in the UK, we hold anywhere between nine-to-12 million bricks at any given time, with the volume fluctuating depending on our order book. To ensure seamless supply, we hold production planning meetings with our suppliers every month to communicate our requirements. Market demand is predicted to rise from Q1 2025, so we have already put plans in place to increase the production volumes from our partnering factories to cope with this.” 

To wrap up, Trevor concludes: “We’re looking to expand the business at a stable pace by identifying viable opportunities that are right for the entire group, and there are several developments in the pipeline that we can’t yet reveal. We will continue to thrive with modest expansion plans, and we are certainly not resting on what we’ve already achieved, but instead we are continually looking to move the business forward.”   

www.traditionalbrickandstone.co.uk