The Cut Laterite Bricks (Briques latérites taillées – BLT) Promotion Day came to an end on Friday 24 November 2023 in Dano, in the South-West region, with a visit to quarry sites. It emerged from the visit that, given the obstacles facing quarry operators, they have rivalled each other in ingenuity to increase their daily production. This is the case of Arsène Hien, owner of a semi-mechanised quarry site. He explains how he went about increasing his production.
To increase production and improve profitability, Arsène Hien decided to make his own machines to mechanise his brick production.
“It’s all down to my ideas and the research I do. I work with my cousin who is a welder by trade. I submit the plans and ideas to him, and he puts them into practice. Afterwards, we correct any imperfections together. All the 4 machines you see here were made on this site”, he declared.
He explains that, in the long term, the aim is to make another machine that can do the stripping itself. Stripping is a step that is done manually after the machine has finished cutting the laterite. “I had already started designing this machine, but due to a lack of resources and certain constraints, I had to stop production”, he confided. “It costs me around 4 million FCFA to make a single machine, not including the fees my cousin charges,” he says.
He also claims that one of his machines can produce 1,000 bricks a day. Arsène Hien admits that he has no problems selling his bricks on the market, as he has a large number of customers.
Each brick is sold at 250 FCFA. But the price can change when customers request the production of bricks of specific sizes.
It employs 9 permanent machinists and 6 part-time reworkers.
The way his machine works is quite simple. It makes the first furrows, i.e. it cuts the laterite in a 30 cm straight line horizontally. She then makes 15 cm grooves vertically. She then moves on to stripping, i.e. detaching the rectangular bricks from their laterite support. This is done manually with a pickaxe.
Once the bricks have been stripped, the final step is to cut them to give them uniform contours. This is also done using pickaxes.
The other operators work in a traditional way, as they do not have the means to manufacture or purchase a machine. They seized the opportunity offered by this promotion day for cut laterite bricks to call on the Ministry of Mines to help them mechanise their work.
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