Manufacturing shift to central Europe: trends in minerals consumption in the ceramic industry in Poland

摘要

The stagnation of the economy in Poland in the beginning of the 1990s caused that domestic consumption of ceramic goods, especially in the construction industry, was much lower (per capita) than that in western European countries. The growth of demand for these products, recorded since 1993, has initially led to the increase of importation, coming basically from western European countries. This also resulted in expansion of the ceramic product ion capacities in Poland, especially in the ceramic tiles and sanitaryware industries, the output of which in the last 15 years increased 7- and more than 5-fold, respectively. That in turn was followed by the sharp increase of the demand for basic raw materials for the ceramic goods manufacturing. The consumption of white-firing clays increased 15 times, while that of feldspar commodities - even 18 times. The supply of these commodities originated only in a small part from the domestic sources, despite the development of their product ion. Therefore, considerable growth of importation of white-firing clays and feldspar commodities was inevitable. The share of these minerals in the domestic consumption has recently achieved 80% and 40%, respectively. It should be also mentioned that in the traditional Polish tableware porcelain and electrical porcelain industries almost al l the needs for clayey raw materials, as well as for feldspar and quartz flour s, have to be met by imports, due to scarcity of domestic sources of appropriate quality.