What does a Lucknow brick kiln earn by class of brick, against its coal bill?

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) prices Class-1 bricks at rupees (Rs) 5.0 and Tukda at Rs 1.3. On its class shares a brick sells for about Rs 3.88 on average, so a 48.6 lakh brick kiln earns about Rs 1.89 crore a season against about Rs 0.99 crore of coal. That is my arithmetic from printed rows.

The class table as printed

• Class-1: 45% of bricks, Rs 5.0 a brick.
• Class-2: 10%, Rs 4.0.
• Class-3: 10%, Rs 2.5.
• Tamda: 20%, Rs 3.5.
• Kali Peti: 5%, Rs 3.0.
• Tukda: 10%, Rs 1.3.
• Coal costs Rs 12,000 a tonne in the cluster. The typical kiln makes 27,000 bricks a day, 48.6 lakh a year, on 826 tonnes of coal.

What the table adds up to

Weighting price by share gives Rs 3.88 a brick: 2.25 + 0.40 + 0.25 + 0.70 + 0.15 + 0.13. Class-1 is 45% of the bricks but 58% of the money. Tukda is 10% of the bricks and 3% of the money.

A kiln with 48.6 lakh bricks at Rs 3.88 earns about Rs 1.89 crore a season. This assumes every brick fired is sold at the printed price; the profile does not say so.

Coal against sales

826 tonnes at Rs 12,000 is Rs 99.1 lakh, which the profile prints rounded as Rs 10 million. That is about 53% of the Rs 1.89 crore, before labour, clay and anything else. One lakh bricks costs about Rs 2.04 lakh of coal and sells for about Rs 3.88 lakh.

My reading: every brick in the kiln sits in the same fire whatever class it comes out as, so a Tukda carries about the coal of a Class-1 brick and sells for about a quarter of the price. If 5 points of output moved from Tukda to Class-1, the sales would rise by 5% x (5.0 minus 1.3) = Rs 0.185 a brick, about Rs 9 lakh a season. The profile does not say which kiln practices move bricks between classes.

A difference inside the profile

The text says coal use is about 16 tonnes per lakh brick. Its table gives 826 tonnes for 48.6 lakh bricks, which is 17.0. This page uses the table, as the live Lucknow page does.

One kiln, one season (my calculation from printed rows)

• Sales: 48.6 lakh x Rs 3.88 = Rs 188.6 lakh, about Rs 1.89 crore
• Coal: 826 t x Rs 12,000 = Rs 99.1 lakh, 53% of sales
• A 10% coal saving: 82.6 t x Rs 12,000 = Rs 9.9 lakh a season
• Cluster: 186,676 t x Rs 12,000 = Rs 2,240 million, as printed; a 10% saving, 18,678 t, is about Rs 224 million
• Coal carbon dioxide (CO2) at 1.76 t per tonne: 826 x 1.76 = 1,454 t, about 77 kg per Rs 1,000 of bricks sold

Prices and quantities are TERI's, undated in the table; coal price today will differ. Coal factor 1.76 t CO2 per tonne for Indian coal, from India's second Biennial Update Report (BUR-2), Table 2.3. TERI's own table prints 196,620 t CO2 for 186,676 t of coal, which implies about 1.05 t per tonne; use your coal's test if you have one.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, so your coal tonnes come from your own invoices. It does not read your sales by class. It is not a third-party verifier and does not issue credits.

• Lucknow brick kilns coal per lakh bricks
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Sources: TERI, Cluster profile: Lucknow brick kilns, 2017 (SAMEEEKSHA)

Last reviewed 2026-11-05. Prices are as printed in a 2017 report. Check today's coal and brick prices before using the rupee lines.