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Building a legacy, brick by brick
by Heather
B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
May 2006 It’s a new world for Old Virginia Brick. Since 1890, the Salem-based
company has been one of the country’s leading makers of “wood-mould” brick.
The bricks are prepared in wooden molds and then fired in modern kilns. “It
gives you a unique look because every brick is slightly different,” says
Chris Moore, vice president of sales and marketing. “It gives you
an Old World look, because the bricks look as if they were made hundreds
of
years ago.”
Old Virginia Brick products can be found at 90 percent
of the buildings constructed at the University of Virginia since World War
II, including the new John Paul
Jones Arena. Other customers over the years have included Yale University,
Wake Forest University, the College of William & Mary and Disney World.
But the company has entered a new phase with its recent acquisition by Old Virginia
Acquisition Group, a private Charlottesville-based investment group that also
has holdings in banking, real estate development and building materials. Selling
the company were CEO Fletcher Smoak, Moore, two other local investors and a Turkish
company.
The 170-employee company was financially healthy and growing
before the ownership change, but Smoak says that the new owners will enable
Old Virginia Brick to
make greater strides towards its goal of being known as the premier wood-mould
brick manufacturer in the country. The initial focus will be on expanding the
brick facilities in Salem and increasing output capacity from 42 million to
55 million bricks each year. “That’s a pretty substantial boost in production,” he
says, noting that the industry as a whole produces 600 million bricks each year. “And
we’ll move on that immediately.”
Old Virginia Brick had revenue of $20 million in 2005 and expects to top $23
million this year. It already is a major player in a very specialized niche.
Only 12 companies in the country provide wood-mould bricks, most of them owned
by large multinational corporations.
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