Here is a term paper on the ‘Classification of Industries’. Find paragraphs, long and short term papers on the ‘Classification of Industries’ especially written for school and college students.
Term Paper on Industries
Term Paper Contents:
- Term Paper on Engineering Industries
- Term Paper on Chemical Industries
- Term Paper on Textile Industries
- Term Paper on Food-Processing Industries
- Term Paper on Other Industries
1. Term Paper on Engineering Industries:
Many other industries use iron and steel as well as other metals as their raw materials. These are the various branches of the engineering industries. Engineering industries, especially heavy engineering, e.g. shipbuilding, which use large quantities of steel are usually found fairly close to iron and steel manufacturing areas.
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Factories making smaller goods, e.g. electronic equipment, or using a wider range of raw materials or with a small but high-quality output, e.g. machine tools, can afford to transport the steel they require over longer distances, and are therefore more scattered in distribution.
i. Industrial Machinery Industries:
The machine tool industry which produces machinery for other industries is a highly specialized one. It uses high- quality steel and requires a skilled labour force. It has great industrial importance, but its output is relatively small compared with that of goods such as electrical appliances or automobiles.
Machine-tool plants are generally located in long-established industrial areas with a ready supply of skilled labour and are unlikely to be established in new regions or underdeveloped countries where the tradition of engineering skill is lacking.
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The machine tool industry is basic to modern industrial development because it makes the machines on which other industries depend. The development of such machinery has allowed many industries, such as textiles, to be staffed by relatively unskilled workers. This in turn has allowed the geographical spread of such industries to all parts of the world.
The main branches of the machine tool industry are those that produce metal working machinery and their components, e.g. power drills, saws, forges, lathes, presses, fixtures, hoists, conveyors, elevators, pumps, rollers, compressors, bearings and such articles as bolts, nuts and screws.
Many firms also undertake the manufacture of textile machinery, e.g. spinning machines, looms, knitting machines and the various types of machines that are needed to make lace, silk, linen, jute, cotton, woollen, worsted and synthetic fibres, as well as cutting and sewing machines for the garment industry.
With increased mechanization, farm machinery is becoming more and more sophisticated. Farmers can no longer work efficiently or quickly enough with simple agricultural implements such as hoes, spades, cangkuls, and wooden ploughs, but require more complicated equipment, e.g. tractors, ploughs, harrows, sowing machinery, binders, combine harvesters, pumps and spraying equipment.
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There are other specialized machines that are employed in canning, bottling, packing, laundry, saw-milling, flour-milling, sugar-refining, pulp- and paper-making, printing, cement works, as well as the wide range of general office equipment.
ii. Electrical Industries:
The manufacture of electrical machinery and appliances began only after 1880 when large-scale electricity generation was made possible. Since then, electrical engineering has become a very important branch of industry and of modem technological development and has penetrated into every aspect of our daily lives.
The heavy electrical engineering industry is concerned with the manufacture of equipment for generating and transmitting electricity, e.g. hydro-turbines, thermal generators, transformers, transmitters, switchboards, electric wires, cables and insulators. Such industries are found in established industrial areas or in coastal locations where a wide range of raw materials, including steel, copper, other metals, rubber and so on are available.
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Light electrical engineering is concerned with the manufacture of a whole range of electrical apparatus for both industrial and domestic use, e.g. radios, tape- recorders, record-players, refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, electrical heaters, shavers, dryers, storage batteries, X-ray apparatus, and other household and office electrical equipment.
Such articles are fairly light and need small amounts of raw materials. They can thus be manufactured in a wide variety of situations. Their main requirement is a large supply of relatively skilled labour for assembling the equipment. They are thus located near major cities rather than in traditional industrial areas.
Such industries rely on electricity rather than mineral fuels for power, and are thus located anywhere where labour and electricity are available. Some developing countries especially in Asia, have taken an increasingly large share of the electrical industries in recent years, making in particular radios, pocket calculators and in some cases television sets, though the makers of T.V. sets are less widely distributed.
Closely related to electrical engineering is the electronics industry, though it is a distinctive industry in its own right. Electronics has grown up as a vital modern industry since the Second World War. It includes the entire sphere of electronic communication and data handling.
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The industry makes the complicated equipment for radio, television, radar, telephone and satellite communications and components such as receivers, amplifiers, transistors, and resisters. It also makes computers for data handling, storage and processing.
The development of the electronics industry has been vital in space exploration, and has allowed scientists and physicists to learn more about the universe as well as launching manned satellites and landing men on the moon.
Modern communication systems allowed the historic moon landings to be viewed ‘live’ by millions of people around the world. The development of electronic computers, capable of processing large quantities of complicated information, has created a tremendous impact on science, commerce and industry.
iii. Transport Equipment Industries:
Vehicles for moving people and goods by land and water have of course always been made. The earliest vehicles were boats, sledges and animal-drawn carts and wagons. The manufacture of such articles was always the work of individual craftsman until the widespread use of steel and steam power in the nineteenth century.
Since that time means of transportation have been rapidly developed and improved and the range of vehicles, including steamships, railway locomotives, automobiles, aircraft and even space vehicles has increased enormously. Transport equipment industries have grown so fast that in all highly- developed industrial areas, it is inevitable to encounter large plants that make, repair and service all descriptions of vehicles.
The following branches of the transport equipment industry are more important:
(a) The Shipbuilding Industry:
In the past, ships and boats were built in countries with a ready supply of timber, especially in maritime countries with a naval outlook and world-wide interest in the mercantile-carrying trade. Norway is an example. Many such countries have continued to build ships but now the main raw material is steel.
Thus shipbuilding, though found all over the world, in major ports, and sheltered, navigable estuaries, is ideally situated in areas noted for the iron and steel industry. It requires large quantities of steel to construct the enormous ships, especially tankers, of today, and transport costs for raw materials would be prohibitive if the steel had to be moved over long distances. The other major requirement of the industry is skilled labour.
Shipbuilding is essentially an industry in which a wide variety of parts are assembled, according to a plan, to form the complete ship. Some of these, such as marine engines, may already have been manufactured by engineering firms elsewhere. In addition to its main construction in metal, a ship also requires timber and other materials for internal construction work and furniture, appliances, fittings and so on.
Ships are large and expensive, so they are usually built in small numbers and to individual designs. There is far less scope for mass-production techniques, though some are beginning to be applied, than in the automobile or railway industries. Smaller ships, boats, pleasure craft and military craft, however, which are less complicated and made in larger numbers are capable of using mass-production techniques.
Shipbuilding industries are found all round the world, and though European, British and American shipyards are still very important, the high cost of labour in these areas is giving a competitive advantage to cheaper producers. Japan where high wage rates are offset by great efficiency has overtaken Europe and the U.S.A., and countries with even lower costs, such as South Korea, Singapore, Yugoslavia and Greece, are becoming increasingly important.
In Europe the largest shipyards are sited in the heavily industrialized seaports: Merseyside (Liverpool), Tyneside (Newcastle), Clydeside (Glasgow), Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Dunkirk, Hamburg, Goteborg, Malmo, Marseilles, Genoa, Cadiz, Trieste and Lisbon. In North America the older shipyards of the New England States, e.g. at Quincy, Boston, Bath and Portsmouth, are now engaged mainly in the manufacture of smaller coastal vessels, yachts, fishing boats, and motorboats.
They have lost ground to the more modern shipyards of New York, Sparrows Point, Newport News (mid-Atlantic region) and those of Montreal, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region. These yards with deep waters, sheltered docks, and locations more central to the main industrial regions make all sorts of ships. They are within easy reach of the raw materials for shipbuilding- heavy machinery, boilers, engines, cables, ropes and electrical installations.
Japan with major shipyards at Yokohama, Tokyo, Kawasaki, Kobe and Nagasaki, greatly increased its shipbuilding industry in the 1950s and 1960s but like other developed countries has grown more slowly in the 1970s, thanks to competition from many smaller producers and a general world shortage of shipbuilding orders.
Its annual output of ships including tankers, by far the largest contributor in terms of tonnage since they are so large, merchant vessels, boats and fishing vessels rose from 10 per cent of the world total in 1950 to almost half in 1970 and is now about 30 per cent. The United Kingdom, once a major shipbuilding nation has gradually declined in importance, due to high costs, old, inefficient shipyards and labour difficulties. It produced almost 40 per cent of world shipping in 1950, about 10 per cent in 1970 and only around 5 per cent today.
Figures of tonnage launched by the U.S.S.R. are not released but must be very considerable comprising merchant and fishing vessels of increasing size as well as naval vessels.
(b) The automobile industry:
The automobile industry began to develop at the end of the nineteenth century and the hundreds of small firms in the U.S.A., Britain and Europe have merged to form very large corporations with international interests, such as General Motors, Ford and Chrysler of the U.S.A.; British Leyland in the U.K.; Volkswagen and Mercedes in Germany; Fiat of Italy; Datsun, Toyota and Mazda of Japan, and several others in France, the U.S.S.R., Sweden and the East European countries.
Today annual world production of automobiles is 32.6 million. The world’s major car producers are the U.S.A., Japan, West Germany, France and other European countries, including Belgium where cars are assembled though not actually manufactured. Minor producers include Brazil, Australia, Sweden, and East European countries like Czechoslovakia.
Some of the major car-making centres include Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta (U.S.A.); Coventry, Birmingham, London, Oxford (U.K.); Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Wolfsburg (VW), Berlin (Germany); as well as Turin, Paris, Norrkoping, Moscow, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne and Sao Paulo.
Most countries have maintained their share of the world automobile market at a similar level over many years but Japan has greatly increased hers and Britain has declined due to labour difficulties, a lack of new designs and a continuing rationalization, within what was once an enormous industry, to produce fewer models from a few large plants instead of an enormous variety of models from numerous small factories.
Like shipbuilding, motor vehicle manufacture involves the assembly of a wide range of component parts. These parts including the car-body, innumerable machine parts, and internal fittings, such as seats, are all made in separate factories and assembled in the car plant.
No single plant could deal with the wide variety of goods required which include iron, steel, non-ferrous metals, glass, plastics, rubber, wood, paint, textiles and many others. These diverse and numerous components are assembled into ‘subassemblies’, e.g. the engine, the chassis, the wheels, which are then finally assembled in the automobile factory.
Because the industry depends for its raw materials on other industrial concerns, and because these must all be readily available to allow production to continue uninterrupted, the best location for the automobile industry is in established industrial regions with a tradition of manufacturing components.
Such areas include the Midlands in the U.K., and the Tokyo region in Japan. Transport of the final product is relatively easy for the car can be driven to its markets, though many are also transported either in complete or sub-assembled form for long distances and assembled in the major markets.
Automobiles are mass-produced for cheapness, and this requires an enormous capital expenditure on sophisticated machine tools and on conveyor belt systems of manufacture. Large-scale production is the only economic way of making cars, for small- scale assembly would require capital expenditure and labour costs out of proportion to the return on sales. Only luxury cars can be made in small numbers and are correspondingly more expensive.
(c) Railway equipment:
The ‘railway era’ began in the early nineteenth century and railway development both in the European and North American industrial nations, and in most of the underdeveloped countries, was rapid because of the cheap, speedy transport it provided, especially for freight.
The industry manufactures both locomotives, powered by steam, diesel oil, or electricity, and rolling stock including various goods wagons for special purposes, e.g. refrigerated trucks, tanker trucks, mineral wagons, and passenger carriages. Modern railway locomotives are usually diesel- or electric-powered, and aluminium and lightweight alloys are used for rolling stock to reduce fuel costs and speed up transport.
Most railway engineering plants are located either in the heavy engineering districts close to the steel rolling mills or at focal points of the national railway system. The United States is the world’s largest locomotive producer. The industry is centred at Detroit, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. The United Kingdom with production at Doncaster, Derby, Glasgow and Manchester, the U.S.S.R., West Germany and Japan are also important producers.
(d) The aircraft industry:
Since the Wright brothers first flew in 1903, the world’s commercial aircraft industry has experienced periodic booms and slumps, and is highly dependent on war, military demands and the volume of commercial airline business. In peace-time, aircraft production capacity is usually maintained above the civilian requirements. There are far more military aircraft made than civilian planes.
In addition, space vehicles and satellites, as well as missiles for military purposes, are increasingly important. Like the electronics industry, to which modern aeronautical engineering is closely linked, a high degree of skill is required and much money has to be spent on research and development. The actual construction of aircraft is like shipbuilding or car manufacture in being a specialized assembly process.
The enormous expenditure on research, design, testing and on constantly modifying and improving aircraft characteristics means that the industry is highly capital-intensive. When considered in the light of the relatively small numbers of aircraft produced, it is not surprising that many aircraft firms are in financial difficulties.
In normal years, the U.S.A. produces the largest number of planes, of which two-thirds are destined for export around the world. The U.S.S.R. is another principal manufacturer and exports mainly to communist countries. Other aircraft makers include the U.K., France, Canada, Italy, Australia, Japan and China, and many other countries assemble imported components.
2. Term Paper on Chemicals Industry:
The chemicals industry only became important about a century ago but it has expanded its influence into every field of modern life. Chemical products of one kind or another are indispensable in almost every economic activity. Chemicals are required for the smelting and refining of metals; by farmers as fertilizers; by the textile industry as dyestuffs and bleaches; in the making of paper, soap, glass, leather and explosives; and in the food-processing industry as preservatives.
In addition, many new products have been developed by the chemicals industry since the 1930s, including plastics, synthetic rubber and synthetic fibres. Constant research is going on in the chemical industry to develop new products and to increase the efficiency of production of older ones. The chemicals industry, especially the petrochemicals industry, is one of the fastest-growing branches of industry today.
The major locational factors of the chemicals industry are the availability of major raw materials, e.g. coal, petroleum, salt deposits and so on either from nearby deposits or from easy imports, and the existence of a market for the products, e.g. dyestuffs, will tend to be manufactured in or near major textile producing areas. Large supplies of water and of power are also essential to the industry.
The major raw materials used by the chemicals industry are drawn from a wide variety of sources. They include mineral deposits such as salt, potash, nitrates, sulphur, coal, petroleum and natural gas; vegetable materials from farms and forests such as wood-pulp; vegetable oils, potatoes; industrial by-products such as gas from coke ovens and blast furnaces; petroleum by-products such as carbon black and sulphur. Electrochemical industries use the atmosphere itself as a raw material from which they extract nitrogen and other chemicals.
The chemicals industry makes innumerable products but it is possible to group most of these under the following divisions:
i. Heavy Chemicals:
Heavy chemicals manufacture relies on mineral deposits or on industrial byproducts for its raw materials and is concentrated mainly near sulphur or salt deposits, or within the manufacturing belts where raw materials can be imported easily, e.g. along the Manchester Ship Canal.
The main heavy chemicals are sulphuric, hydrochloric, nitric, and acetic acids, and alkalis such as sodium carbonate or salt, caustic soda, lime, chlorine (used as a disinfectant for purifying water and for bleaching purposes), and soda ash (used in the manufacture of soap, glass, paper and detergents). Major producers are the industrialized countries-the U.S.A., West Germany, the U.K. and Japan.
ii. Petrochemicals and Related Chemicals:
These are mainly the chemicals derived from coal, gas and petroleum and are probably even more important than the heavy chemicals. These industries are usually located near the coalfields or petroleum refineries which supply their raw materials. The main organic chemicals are explosives, fertilizers, plastics, synthetic rubber and synthetic fibres.
Industrial explosives are made from such raw materials as potassium nitrate, sulphur, acetone, nitrogen and petroleum by-products and the final products such as gunpowder, dynamites, nitroglycerine and TNT (trinitrotoluene) are used widely in mining, quarrying and blasting for road and rail construction. Explosives also have a wide military market. Sites of explosives manufacture are usually at a distance from urban centres because of the dangerous nature of the industry.
Modern farming all over the world makes use of large quantities of mineral fertilizers to increase crop yields and to maintain soil fertility. The three most important mineral fertilizers are nitrates, potash and phosphates. Originally the bulk of the world’s nitrate fertilizers came from Chile where ‘caliche’ or sodium nitrate is mined in the Chilean deserts.
Today this has been largely replaced by nitrates derived from petrochemicals, coal or the electrochemical industry. Sulphate of ammonia, one of the main sources of nitrate fertilizers, is a by-product of coal gas and coke manufacture. The bulk of the world’s supply of potash fertilizers comes from potassium salt deposits, e.g. from the U.S.A., West Germany, East Germany, France and the U.S.S.R.
The source of phosphate fertilizers is either phosphatic rocks and guano or basic slag from the steel industry. Superphosphate, a widely- used fertilizer, is derived from sulphur, pyrites and sulphuric acid.
Plastic, one of the greatest inventions of mankind, was first discovered by British chemists in 1856. It is very extensively used because it is durable, attractive and cheap. There is a wide range of plastics with varied names, such as polystyrene, polythene, vinyl, P.V.C. and so on derived from the polymerization processes in petrochemical works. They are used for household utensils, toys, ornaments, containers, combs, knife-handles, piano keys, floor coverings, clothing, building materials, in paints and so on.
Plastics have now replaced wood, glass, metal and natural fibres in many areas of industrial and domestic use. One special type of plastic is synthetic rubber, derived from petrochemicals, which competes in world markets with natural rubber. Synthetic fibres such as nylon, dacron, tetron, perlon, terylene and acrilan are also made.
They have made great inroads into the silk, cotton and woollen markets. Petrochemical products also include paints, adhesives, dyestuffs and detergents. The main petrochemicals manufacturing countries are the U.S.A., the European countries, especially West Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Britain, the U.S.S.R., Japan, and South Korea.
iii. Pharmaceuticals:
This branch of the chemicals industry manufactures drugs and medicines. At first these were derived from animal and vegetable sources such as roots, barks, leaves or herbs, but with the development of organic chemistry in the twentieth century, they can be made much more cheaply and effectively from chemical compounds.
Large international companies specialize in making drugs, and large chemical concerns, such as I.C.I., Du Pont and so on, also have pharmaceutical interests. The large- scale development of drugs has revolutionized medicine and played a large part in reducing world death rates.
iv. Others:
Many other products are made with the use of chemicals as raw materials. These include soap, made from alkalis and vegetable oils; detergents, made from synthetic chemical compounds which are more ‘efficient’ than soap; perfumes, cosmetics and toilet preparations, lotions and oil of various kinds.
Dyes, pigments, paints, varnishes, and other cleaning and polishing preparations are derived wholly or in part from petrochemicals or coal but include vegetable oils, turpentine and so on. Insecticides, fungicides, adhesives, refrigerants, and food-processing ingredients such as preservatives, essences, flavourings and colourings are also part of the chemicals industry.
Salt is a particularly important chemical in this field and another is monosodium glutamate (Aji-no-moto, Ve-Tsin, etc). Glass is made by fusing sand, soda and lime, and is thus dependent on the chemicals industry for its raw materials. Chemicals are also needed in pulp and paper-making, leather-making and many other fields.
3. Term Paper on Textile Industries:
The manufacture of textile fabrics is one of the oldest and most widespread industries in the world. Despite the widespread mechanization of textile and garment making, in many parts of the globe, textiles are also still made by hand spinners and hand weavers in many places.
Modern, mechanized textile manufacture was first developed in Britain, as a result of spinning and weaving machines invented by such people as Har- greaves, Crompton (mule), Arkwright (water-frame) and Cartwright. From Britain the techniques of textile spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing and finishing spread to other parts of Europe, to the U.S.A., to China, India, Japan and the rest of the world.
Research and development has resulted in the emergence of new and improved fabrics, including synthetic fibres such as rayon and nylon. The entire range of textiles including woven, knitted and felted fabrics has progressed tremendously in quality, texture, style and finish. Modern textile fabrics have many added qualities. They can be made to resist wrinkling, staining, fading.
Industrial cloths are made strong and durable enough for use in automobile brake linings, industrial filters, parachutes, conveyor-belts, seat-covers, tyre manufacture and so on. The hard fibres (hemp, abaca, henequen, jute) are used for matting, sacking and rope-making. Cotton is still the ‘king of all fibres’ but synthetic fibres are increasingly important. Wool, linen and silk are the other important fibres in textiles manufacture for clothing.
Textile manufacture using wool, cotton, silk, or linen according to the climatic zone has been known for thousands of years and was practised all over the world. During the nineteenth century, however, ascendancy in textile production passed to Europe and North America because of the development of mechanization in the industry. Britain, with no local supplies of cotton and only a small proportion of its requirements of raw wool, became the Leading textile producer. This position could not be maintained.
As the use of mechanization spread and hitherto underdeveloped countries such as Japan, China and India began to industrialize, the traditional producers lost their dominance of the market.
Textile manufacture is now one of the most widely distributed industries for the following reasons:
(a) Everyone needs clothing and therefore there is a constant demand for textiles all over the world. These can be most cheaply and economically supplied by local manufacture.
(b) Mechanization has meant that textile manufacture can be done using unskilled or partially skilled labour. It is therefore an ideal industry for countries where there is no background of industrial skills. Textile industries are always among the first to be developed by underdeveloped countries.
(c) Cotton, especially, is grown in a very large number of countries. It is good economic sense for the growing countries to introduce industries which make use of local raw materials.
(d) Fibres are relatively light, non-perishable and easily transported. This means that they are easily traded and even countries producing no fibres can easily establish a textiles industry; Japan is an excellent example where both cotton and wool are almost all imported.
Textile industries are located mainly in relation to power and labour supplies. The lightness and ease of transport of fibres means that raw materials location is of negligible advantage. Coalfields in Britain and Europe, H.E.P. supplies in southern U.S.A. and Japan, are often important locational factors. Cheap labour supplies were an important factor in the establishment of textiles industries in southern U.S.A. and in Japan. Hong Kong, India and other Asian countries where labour is still cheap, still rely to a large extent on this factor for their competitiveness in world markets.
The use of synthetic fibres has led to the location of textile industries near to petrochemical and oil refining plants in some cases, but ease of transport of synthetic, as of natural fibres, means this is a relatively unimportant factor. The textile industries have been dealt with in greater detail in relation to natural and synthetic fibres.
4. Term Paper on Food-Processing Industries:
The food-processing industries are of several kinds. The first is the processing of the grains, leaves, roots or stems of plants, or the slaughtering and butchering of animals, to make easily-used foodstuffs from basic agricultural products. Examples are rice-milling to remove the husks, flour-milling to remove the husks and grind up the grains of wheat, sugar refining to convert raw sugar to easily-used granulated or lump sugar, oil pressing from oilseeds.
Others are the brewing of beer from barley and hops, the making of wine from grapes, the curing of tobacco, and the drying and grinding of coffee or cocoa, and tea processing. In earlier days, and in some parts of the world today, such processes were carried out by the subsistence cultivators who grew the crops and used them. With the advent of commercial rather than subsistence farming and larger-scale operations, centralized processing became more economic.
The second aspect of food-processing is the preservation of foodstuffs. This reduces the reliance on local and immediate food supplies characteristic of nomadic societies and subsistence farmers. By preserving food produced in one place for use elsewhere, urban, industrial and commercial development is possible, because an increasingly large section of the community is freed from actual food production.
Food preservation also has great advantages in times of emergency, such as wars, floods, famines and so on, for food can easily be brought from more favoured areas. The main processes by which food is preserved are by canning, bottling, drying, salting, pickling, curing and in recent times by freezing. Fish, fruits, vegetables and a wide range of cooked and prepared food such as ice-cream, drinks, fruit juices, cakes and pastries, can be preserved in one or more of the above ways.
Canning and freezing are probably the most important methods of food preservation today, and are used to preserve either raw or cooked food almost indefinitely. Cooked food in cans has been kept good for many years under all kinds of conditions. Freezing has more limited applications for the frozen food must be kept at low temperatures, but given the availability of refrigeration either raw (e.g. fish, meat) or cooked (e.g. vegetables, prepared dishes) food can be kept for long periods.
Food has to be processed soon after it is produced to avoid being spoiled, so most food-processing industries are located in towns in the centre of agricultural districts. For example, flour-milling and meat-packing are important industries of such cities as Chicago, Kansas City and Omaha in the Mid-West of the U.S.A. Meat-packing and freezing are important in Argentina, Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand.
Pineapples, peaches, pears and other canned fruits are processed in the immediate area in which they are grown. Wine is made, or grapes are dried for currants and raisins in the Mediterranean regions. Oil is pressed from oil palm fruits in or near the oil palm estates. Some crops, however, are less perishable than others so that they can be exported in their original form or have only the preliminary processing done in the producing areas. These include coffee, groundnuts and grains.
5. Term Paper on Other Industries:
Many industries of great importance fall into none of the major industrial groups.
They include the following activities:
i. Forest Industries:
These include the production of sawn-wood, constructional timber, veneers, plywoods, fibreboards, pulp, paper and synthetic fibres from raw timber, as well as furniture-making, toy-making, and musical instrument-making which use some wood or timber products. Another aspect is the printing industry which uses newsprint and high quality paper in the production of newspapers, books and magazines.
ii. Pottery:
This is the making of objects in either earthenware or china (porcelain) from kaolin or china clay. Clay that has a high content of iron turns reddish- pink when fired in the kiln, while other types change to blue, grey, buff or black. The final product of pottery-making depends on the amount of kneading of the clay to drive out air bubbles; the degree of heating in the kiln; and the art of glazing, decorating and finishing.
Porcelain is made translucent by adding some kind of fluxing material to the clay before firing. Chinese porcelain of the Tang, Ming and Ching Dynasties is highly valued. The Japanese and Korean porcelain based on the ancient Chinese style in decoration and glazing is also highly esteemed. Pieces from the famous European potteries of Wedgewood (U.K.) and Meissen (East Germany) are also highly valued. Today, however, as in the past, the vast majority of pottery of all kinds is made for local markets and not as a luxury. Pottery is mass-produced in a large number of countries.
iii. Building Materials:
Bricks and tiles are made in a similar way to pottery except that the type of clay used is far less specialized. Bricks are produced in very large quantities all round the world. Cement is an increasingly important building material. It is made by crushing and burning limestone or clay, at a very high temperature. Special cements are made with ashes and other materials.
The process of cement- making was first patented in 1824 by Joseph Aspdin of England, and cement and concrete are now the most important of all building materials. Building blocks are made of concrete or cinders for specific uses and various types of stone or rock are quarried for building purposes. Other building materials such as steel girders, reinforcing bars, wood, plastics, wall-paper, metals and roofing materials are derived from other industries.
iv. Leather Goods and Footwear:
Leather from cattle hides, and the skins of horses, sheep, goats, reptiles, after soaking in chemical tanning materials, is used for making leather clothing, shoes, brief-cases, bags and belts, saddles, straps, and so on. In the footwear industry, which is the most important branch of leather-working, other goods such as rubber, canvas, and synthetic materials are also important either for part of or the whole of the finished boots or shoes. A specialized branch of the hide trade is in furs for luxury clothing.