Everything you wanted to know about porcelain tableware & how it is made…
I have been sourcing Porcelain for last 20 years from various OEM factories in entire South East Asia like Sri Lanka, Bangla Desh, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia including China. During my countless sourcing trips to various factories, I learnt a lot about the manufacturing process. And also various methods adopted by different factories, rather different countries… More or less entire manufacturing process (different stages in manufacturing) is somewhat same/ similar everywhere. There are two distinct high temperature firing in Porcelain manufacturing. One is Biscuit (Bisq) firing typically at 1350-1400 degrees C and another is Glaze (Glost) firing at about 1200-1250 degrees C. That’s why porcelain becomes quite strong, vitrified & more durable as compared to any other Ceramic, bonechina body.
This two time firing is standard norm in all countries, in all porcelain manufacturing countries except China.. I found one remarkably different thing in China……. Chinese have learnt & perfected the art of manufacturing at Low cost ! They fire porcelain only once … Bisq & Glost firing together at once !!
This saves huge firing (fuel) cost, which is usually 25-30% of total manufacturing cost… And this is one major reason why Chinese Porcelain is much lower cheaper in price than porcelain from other countries. The labour cost , another big component of total manufacturing cost, is usually much lower in China until few years ago… Now it is almost same/ may be more in China as compared to other South East Asian countries.
Of course , the products fired two times are much more stronger, durable as compared to products fired only once..
