Carthago Brique invests in mega-plant in Tajerouine

It is being developed on a “monstre” surface area of about 130.000 sm and required a total investment of 120 million dinars (about 36 million euros). It will employ 150 people.

Just four years after inaugurating the Briqueterie Jbel Ouest (BJO) plant in Zaghouan, Carthago Brique (a business unit of Carthago Ceramic) has invested in the construction of another high-capacity brickworks in Tajerouine, Tunisia. As the largest and most technologically advanced clay product factory ever built in the region, it is expected to give a major boost to the local and national economies.

The new facility, which involved a total investment of 120 million Tunisian dinars (approximately € 36 million), came into operation in October 2024 and has rapidly achieved excellent levels of production. It covers a vast surface area of around 130,000 square metres and is expected to create around 150 jobs.

The extrusion department was meticulously designed and tailored to the company’s production process, raw materials and clay characteristics. The project was overseen entirely by Novi di Modena-based company Tecnofiliere, which proposed the most efficient solution to ensure optimal extrusion performance. The plant is equipped with TFE-J EVO extruder dies, recently upgraded with mechanisms to facilitate clay flow and guarantee maximum abrasion resistance. The cores and liners of each die are made from Tecnocarbide®, a material with a wear resistance of 2000 HV, allowing for long production runs without significant changes in the weight or dimensions of the bricks. The TFE-J EVO system maintains the benefits of wide-exit extrusion, allowing for a larger extrusion cross-section and in turn significantly increasing hourly production capacity while reducing energy consumption. Energy efficiency is further boosted by the installation of innovative pressure heads equipped with special polymer linings, which bring substantial improvements in terms of energy efficiency and ensure almost unlimited service life. Tecnofiliere also supplied a TF 1000 EVO FC top-of-the-range fully automatic die-washing machine equipped with a PLC in the control panel.

Looking ahead, the Carthago Group plans to build a third clay product manufacturing facility called Carthago Sanitaire, which will complete the investment cycle that began in 2016 with the Briqueterie Jbel Ouest (BJO) plant. Including BBM Bir M’Cherga, the group’s first production site built in 2009, Carthago will reach a total installed capacity of over 5,000 tonnes of clay products per day, further strengthening its position as an industry leader.