Ceramic Industry in Turkey

The Turkish Ceramic Industry has developed a rapid growth, after industrialisation from early fifties. The influence of the public companies was at the beginning critical, but the privatisation process launched during the last years promotes changes to private companies decisions. Most relevant figures for production, foreign trade and employment for ceramic sectors like tiles, roof, refractories, tableware, electroporcelain and red building brick are showed. Trends and prospective for different sectors are very differents. Tile and roofing products show specially relevant figures. Today, Turkey with 250 million square meters tiles produced in 2000, is located in the third position among European countries. Sanitary ware production is also relevant and with 10 million pieces/year, Turkey leading European production. For refractories area, the excess in production capacity, nearly 60% reveals strong problems, in spite of some good basic raw materials. Tableware shows also critical prospective due to the East Asian low production casts. Electroceramics production shows a sustained development for conventional materials. Data for R&D institutions, professional and teaching ceramic network was also described.