Episode 80 - Back From Hiatus, Straight Into WA's Brick Shortage Mess

Okay.

I will pass on the information that I know.

No one really knows unless you're the supplier.

Yep.

Right? And the main supplier in WA is your brickmakers or BGC, which is the governing body who owns brickmakers and also owns Millenbrick.

Now, that's a whole different fucking conversation about the red tape and the bullshit of how one main supplier is basically the monopoly of all the brick supply in the industry.

That's a whole different fucking conversation to have.

But they are the main supplier that 90 plus percent of all builders, residential, are using.

Then you've got the commercial division as well and stuff like that.

Everyone's using the same guys.

Mm-hmm.

Now, the first time we really started hearing about proper brick shortages was actually last year.

And what was happening is the main issue that we were starting to receive from the builders and the feedback we're getting is the fact that the face bricks, the externals, they just couldn't keep up with what it is.

So what the supplier was doing and people would actually notice who originally signed up and started going to construction now going, hey, how come I've only got three different face brick options included rather than Fucking two years ago, you had about 12 or 14.

So the supplier was already reducing certain options and stuff like that to handle the volume in colors and volume and different styles to help try and keep on top of- Alleviate

the pressure.

Yeah, just to alleviate a little bit in the sense of you're still getting some cream or red face bricks, but you're not getting seven different variations anymore.

So they were trying to do what they can.

And what was happening, it was getting a bit worse.

And there was some news articles from last year and early this year.

And what we were currently working with is it was based on the backorder system.

So what was happening, and we're going to be having more episodes with like...

With our builders and shit like that, we've got some levator coming in also to go into more detail.

But this is the stuff I know.

Now, the backorder scenario was happening.