Vertical Shaft Brick Kiln - gearing for cleaning the environment in the brick sector
Subroto Roy & Deepak Upadhyay     sroy@sdalt.ernet.in

 

Millions of dollars are spent in the form of grants, subsidies and loans to make

Letter issued by Chairman, CPCB

this earth a cleaner place. But are the present cleaner options – easily available, more efficient, cost effective, technologically successful and most important, accepted by the society at large?

Keeping these questions in mind, a new initiative "India Brick Project" was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and implemented by Development Alternatives, TERI, Gram Vikas and Damle Clay Structurals Pvt. Ltd. was launched. The major stakeholders including brick entrepreneurs, policy makers and regional industry associations agree that the Vertical Shaft Brick Kiln Technology is a highly viable and appropriate solution for Indian conditions.
 

Policy Support

Policy support has been forthcoming from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The Central Board is preparing to issue draft notification for Emission standards and stack height regulation for the Vertical Shaft Brick Kilns. In their opinion, the Vertical Shaft Brick Kilns are energy efficient with low emission levels and do not require high stacks unlike BTKs. Most recently, the Central Board has recommended to the state Pollution Control Board and PCCs to promote VSBK technology for brick making.
 

Capital Financing

Brick industry has two profiles of entrepreneurs.

a) The large manufactures (annual production > 40 lacs) who have high capital intensive set ups like BTKs.
b) The medium scale manufacturers and clamp operators with annual production between 1 lakh to 20 lakh bricks / annum. They generally operate on low capital margin with negliesgible fixed investments.

VSBK - New Look

The financing options available to medium scale entrepreneurs are indeed limited as majority of finance is needed for working capital. Banks and financing institutions shy away from providing finance as there are no tangible fixed assets and the traditional brick business is susceptible to vagaries of weather VSBK requires almost 20 times lesser time and investment as compared to clamps and BTKs. Risk for offering credit to VSBK is further reduced as kiln itself act as permanent fixed investment and can be used as collateral security. The pulse of increasing confidence among bankers can be easily assessed from the fact that a loan was sanctioned from ‘Oriental Bank’ Shivpuri (M.P) to a women entrepreneur in short time of just 8 days. Currently more than 6 entrepreneurs have taken loan from bank under KVIC margin money scheme.

From the point of view of banks and financial institutions, Development Alternatives is working towards achieving better technological performance with higher level of appropriate mechanization. This will benefit the entrepreneurs in terms of arranging financing for capital investments. At present, the capital expenditure is on account of mechanized lifting, lifting screw and trolley arrangement, pugging mill and brick extruder.
 

Production Flexibility

VSBK gives a unique flexibility in brick production where one can easily change his productivity by decreasing or increasing the operations at its shafts.
 

Labour Friendly

VSBK offer a conducive environment for the brick workers to work an almost smokeless and dust free environment.

With this perspective in mind DA with its sisters concern TARA is preparing a roll out plan to establish large number of kilns in coming five years in Bihar, M.P, U.P., Rajasthan, Orissa, Chattisgarh and Raipur. The details will be shared in the forthcoming issue.   q    

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