Imerys Tableware offers a comprehensive range of ceramic bodies, glazes and raw materials to tableware manufacturers world wide. This comes with unrivalled technical backup.

The Tableware raw material portfolio includes ball clays, feldspars, halloysite, kaolins and pegmatite. These are widely used in high quality tableware applications such as porcelain, bone china, hotelware, earthenware, stoneware and technical ceramics. Our raw materials not only provide outstanding mechanical strength and plasticity; the very low levels of iron oxide and titania ensure exceptional whiteness and translucency. In addition our mineralogical expertise and understanding of the demands of ceramic applications result in raw materials that set the international benchmark for high quality and consistency.

Imerys Tableware offers a range of ceramic bodies, suitable for all forming techniques from isostatic pressing, jiggering, pressure casting to traditional casting. In collaboration with customers, Imerys Tableware has also developed a range of glazes for all applications.

Imerys Tableware with its international brands, such as ECC, KPLC and NZCC, has a long history of helping tableware producers to improve their productivity. With an unrivalled global presence and its close association with shipping lines, forwarding agents and local carriers, Imerys Tableware can respond rapidly to customers' needs, wherever they are in the world.

Further information

Imerys Tableware production sites

Ball clay is a mineral formed from the weathering and transportation by water of parent rocks which are deposited in ancient river basins from where it is now extracted. English ball clay, for example, is derived from the weathering and decomposition of rocks such as shale, sandstone, granite and chalk some 45-50 million years ago. English ball clays are very fine grained minerals, composed mainly of disordered kaolinite with varying amounts of micaceous mineral, very fine grained quartz and in some cases, traces of carbon.

Imerys Tableware has at its disposal ball clays with a range of different properties .By blending selected clays from different locations Imerys can provide high quality products for a range of ceramic applications.

Imerys ball clays are particularly suitable for tableware manufacture. These fine grained, highly plastic, sedimentary clays offer the following advantages throughout the tableware production process, particularly during the challenging stages of forming, drying and firing.

• Excellent workability
  
• High unfired strength
  
• Stable rheological properties
  
• Low organic content
  
• Low residue

In order to help customers choose the most suitable ball clay blend for their needs Imerys has named all of its English ball clays with prefixes to categorise their key properties:

• Hywite - a group of clays with high fired brightness.
  
• Hymod - a group of clays exhibiting high modulus of rupture for applications where strength is of primary importance.
  
• Hyplas - a group of clays with high strength and excellent workability. They are more siliceous than the other groups.

Although the English ball clays form the core of the product portfolio as they offer the unique combination of qualities of strength, plasticity and whiteness, Imerys Tableware produce ball clays in Asia, Europe and the United States for the local markets.

Further information

Imerys Tableware ball clays

Imerys Tableware production sites

Feldspars are used as fluxing agents in the production of ceramics, where they play a vital role during firing. Imerys Tableware feldspars, produced in sites throughout France, offer high potassium content with low iron and titanium, which are essential for whiteness and translucency. Through a stringent control of the production processes, Imerys feldspars provide the tableware manufacturer with the assurance that the fusibility of the product satisfies technical requirements.

Pegmatites are rocks comprising of several minerals: usually potassium feldspar, quartz and a little kaolin, which give a natural fluxing capability and, because of low colouring oxides, are especially suitable for white tableware. Imerys Tableware produces pegmatite in the north east of Bavaria in Germany.

Further information

Imerys Tableware feldspar
Imerys Tableware pegmatite
Imerys Tableware production sites

Kaolin typically comprises 25% to 50% of tableware body formulations. It belongs to a mineral group which includes halloysite and kaolinite, and it is important in providing optimum unfired characteristics to the body. The key properties imparted to the body are:

• Optimal rheological characteristics, including plasticity and casting behaviour which allows articles to be easily shaped
• High mechanical strength to permit the shaped articles to both be handled and processed with minimal breakage.

Imerys Tableware has developed an extensive range of kaolin and halloysite products which can provide:

• High clay content to give the maximum economic advantage and great flexibility in developing formulations
• Low to ultra-low levels of Fe₂O₃ & TiO₂ - to allow the manufacture of very white and highly translucent tableware
• A range of K₂O contents to enable fine control of vitrification and to minimise pyroplastic deformation
• Fast casting - to give optimal productivity
• Good workability and high unfired strength - providing easier processing in manufacturer and lower production losses
• A range of particle size distributions - allowing, in combination with the other raw material, optimum packing densities to be achieved
• Low residue - minimal sieving waste giving maximum value

Each grade of Imerys Tableware kaolin and halloysite delivers what are probably the most important criteria of all - consistency. Imerys Tableware raw materials are monitored and controlled at each stage of production to ensure that their performance meets stringent specifications, to provide manufacturers with predictable and trusted performance.

Imerys Tableware is able to offer an extensive range of consistent and high performing kaolins because, uniquely, it has both world class deposits and unrivalled technical expertise. Imerys has deposits in the renowned kaolin regions of England (ECC), France (KPCL), Thailand (MRD) and the United States (K-T Clay), as well as in New Zealand (NZCC) where halloysite is mined. In each of these regions, Imerys Tableware uses the latest, most advanced technologies (sometimes patented) derived from the 250 year heritage of the industry.

Further information

Imerys Tableware kaolins
Imerys Tableware halloysite
Imerys Tableware production sites

·

Imerys Tableware produces ready-to-use ceramic bodies and glazes in a form required for modern and traditional technologies:

• Spray-dried granulate (body and glaze)
  
• Plastic body
  
• Slurry form (glaze)

These bodies and glazes are quality-assured using world standard procedures. Prepared bodies and glazes enable customers to lower production costs as there is need to invest in a slip house, body preparation, raw material silos, quality control etc.

Customers can benefit from our extensive knowledge of minerals, bodies and production of ceramics, For instance, as the world leader in industrial minerals, Imerys has the technical expertise to design bodies to be fired at low temperatures, giving the potential of significant savings to the tableware manufacturer.

An important objective of Imerys is to help customers increase their yields and productivity by providing high quality raw materials and the expertise to use them effectively. The recipes of Imerys Tableware bodies and glazes are based on ingredients that are well-known for their consistent performance:

• Ball clays : Hymod Prima, Hymod Blue Hymod KC
• Kaolins: NZCC Premium, SSP, SSP05, SP, Grolleg, Regal, Treviscoe, BIP, Tirschenreuth Kaolin
• Others: feldspars, flux, alumina, bone ash, Tirschenreuth Pegmatite, quartz, chamotte, organic additives etc.

Imerys Tableware's wide range of ceramic bodies and glazes is suitable for all tableware applications. Through the diverse array of body types, ranging from porcelain, bone china vitreous china to aluminous porcelain, Imerys offers solutions to give products with key properties: reliable fired colour, translucency, strength, mechanical and chemical resistance, dishwasher durability etc.

Typical tailor-made bodies include: crème bodies, extra white bodies, high strengthened bodies, high plasticity bodies etc.

Imerys Tableware also provides bodies for technical ceramics, including bodies for electro-porcelain.

Further information

Imerys Tableware bodies
Imerys Tableware glazes
Imerys Tableware production sites

The success of Imerys Tableware results from an in-depth understanding of our customer's requirements and their markets. Thanks to close partnerships with customers, technical schools and universities, we are able to maintain our position at the forefront of research and development.

Imerys Ceramics has a significant number of strategically positioned laboratories across Asia, Europe and North America devoted to customer support, quality control and research and development. For Imerys Tableware these include facilities located at Cornwall in England, Limoges in France, New Lynn in New Zealand and Selb in Germany. With such state-of-the-art equipment and experienced technical staff, Imerys Tableware has the resources to provide customers with innovative solutions for raw materials, bodies and glazes.

Thanks to extensive knowledge of mineral technology, unrivalled depth of application expertise and highly consistent products, customers can trust Imerys Tableware to help them achieve improved performance and greater productivity.

Further information

Imerys Ceramics Research & Development