Builders in Western Australia report being placed on allocation for maxi bricks by the state’s only major producer. The constraint itself is not the surprising part. The market that produces it was signed off six years ago.
Brick supply in Perth has been awkward for a while. Face brick colours have moved on and off backorder, lead times have stretched, and builders have managed it by holding selections open, switching ranges, or sequencing around whatever was landing that month.
Maxi brick was the thing you did not have to think about. It is the workhorse. It goes into internal walls, it gets rendered or painted, and nobody chooses it for how it looks.
That has changed. Builders report that maxi brick has been added to allocation, and Midland Brick’s own product listing now shows Maxibrick, Maxibrick Acoustic and Longreach as “Enquire Now” rather than in stock, under a standing site notice that some clay brick and paving products are on backorder.
The fallback line has a queue of its own. That matters more than a stock notice usually would, because it removes the last piece of slack in a wall system with almost no substitutes once the slab is down.
What maxi brick actually does in a WA home
Midland Brick describes its Maxi Brick range as products for internal brick walls, and notes that utility bricks are typically used internally or rendered, so colour and texture are not guaranteed in selection.
That is the point. Maxi brick is not a design decision. It is structure and separation, and in a double brick house it is a large share of the total brick count on the job.
Definition: maxi brick
A maxi brick is a large format clay utility brick used mainly for internal walls, where it is rendered, painted or left concealed rather than exposed. Because it is not selected for appearance, it is normally treated as a commodity line rather than a specified product. In double brick construction it typically makes up a substantial portion of the bricks on a build.
One producer, one set of kilns, one queue
Western Australia has one major brick producer. Midland Brick, owned by BGC, has held that position since Austral Bricks mothballed its Cardup plant in 2023.
The ACCC understood exactly what it was approving. When it declined to oppose BGC’s acquisition of Midland Brick in 2020, it did so because the most likely alternative was Midland Brick exiting the market altogether. The regulator’s own assessment noted that an exit would substantially reduce brick kiln capacity, which could cause prices to rise rapidly and create a shortage of supply for customers.
In other words, the choice was a concentrated market or a much smaller one. The regulator took the concentrated market, and the trade off that came with it is visible now.
A single producer market does not absorb demand the way a competitive one does. There is no second kiln to pick up the overflow and no rival quoting a shorter lead time. When demand runs past capacity, allocation is the only lever left. Reading that structure is part of understanding what is actually shifting across the industry rather than treating each shortage as a one off.
Demand did not spike, it just never went away
This is not a HomeBuilder style surge. WA activity has simply stayed high and flat.
ABS Building Approvals for July 2026 recorded 1,688 private sector house approvals in Western Australia in seasonally adjusted terms, down 0.1 per cent for the month. Total dwellings approved came in at 2,270, down 0.3 per cent. The trend estimate for WA houses sits at 1,678.
Those are not crisis numbers. They are steady numbers, month after month, against a national pipeline where the ABS counted 243,864 dwellings under construction at the end of the March quarter.
Sustained demand is harder on a single supplier than a spike is. A spike ends. A plateau keeps the kilns at capacity indefinitely, with no window to rebuild stock. The labour side compounds it, with national vacancy fill rates falling to 68.2 per cent in the March quarter according to Jobs and Skills Australia, and bricklaying sits among the trades with a retention gap rather than a training one.
There is no second kiln to pick up the overflow and no rival quoting a shorter lead time. When demand runs past capacity, allocation is the only lever left.
Allocation is a contract problem before it is a program problem
A shortage that shows up as price can be priced. A shortage that shows up as allocation cannot, because the builder no longer controls the date.
Under allocation, a builder can hold a signed contract, a finalised selection, a booked bricklaying gang and no delivery window. That is a different exposure to cost escalation, and it lands on the clauses governing time rather than money. It is worth understanding how supply and delay provisions are written in that context.
Clay brick markets are regional for a simple reason. Bricks are heavy and low in value relative to freight, which is why interstate substitution has never been a routine answer for a WA residential job.
The state is already funding the alternative
The Western Australian Government is not treating this as a materials problem. It is treating it as a method problem, backing WA’s move toward timber framing and prefabricated components with $49 million through the Housing Innovation Fund to local manufacturers, alongside separate funding for advanced manufacturing facilities at Neerabup and Kwinana.
That funding is easier to read now. A method that depends on one producer and one trade in sequence inherits every constraint either of them has.
Double brick still dominates detached housing in Perth, and buyer expectation is a real constraint on changing that quickly. But the argument for qualifying a second wall system stops being theoretical the moment the internal brick is on allocation too.
What this looks like from outside WA
The specific circumstances are Western Australian. The structure is not.
Any state where a dominant wall material ends up with a single producer at scale is one downturn away from the same position, and the ACCC’s 2020 reasoning shows how that happens without anyone doing anything wrong. Capacity exits because it cannot make money, and the market that remains is more fragile than the one before it.
WA is the first place in Australia where that is being tested at scale in residential construction. It is worth watching, wherever you build.
Frequently asked questions
Supply is constrained rather than absent. Midland Brick’s website carries a standing notice that some clay brick and paving products are on backorder, and every line in its Maxibrick range, including Maxibrick Acoustic and Longreach, is listed as “Enquire Now” rather than in stock. Builders report being placed on allocation, including for maxi brick.
Midland Brick, owned by BGC, is the state’s only major brick producer. Austral Bricks, part of Brickworks, mothballed its Cardup plant in 2023, which left Midland Brick as the sole producer operating at scale in Western Australia.
Maxi brick is a large format clay utility brick used mainly for internal walls. Midland Brick describes its Maxi Brick range as products for internal brick walls, and notes that utility bricks are typically used internally or rendered, so colour and texture are not guaranteed in selection.
Clay bricks are heavy and low in value relative to the cost of moving them, which is why brick markets tend to operate regionally rather than nationally. Interstate freight has not been a routine substitute for a Western Australian residential job.
The ACCC did not oppose BGC’s acquisition of Midland Brick in 2020. Its assessment was that the most likely alternative was Midland Brick exiting the market entirely, and that such an exit would substantially reduce kiln capacity, which could cause prices to rise rapidly and create a shortage of supply for customers.
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Last updated: 14 September 2026
General Information Only. This article provides general information about conditions in the Australian construction industry. It does not take into account your particular circumstances and is not legal, financial or professional advice. Figures cited are current as at the date of publication and may be revised by their issuing bodies. You should obtain your own advice before acting on anything in this article.
Author: TGB Editorial
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