Industry Overview
The Glazed Ceramics industry is renowned for its creativity and its functionality. The industry can be broken down into several sectors. Generally speaking, it is taken to include the following sub-sectors:
- Tableware and giftware
- Sanitary ware
- Wall and floor tiles
- Craft potters
- Technical and industrial ceramics
The Glazed Ceramics industry comprises around 1,200 UK workplaces, employing over 30,000 employees. In fact, it is the 7th largest employer in Europe.
Around 90% of the industry employs fewer than 50 employees; with over 80% employing less than 10 with over 85% of the total workforce based in England.
This industry is spread across the whole of the UK, with its highest concentration in West Midlands, Yorkshire and Northern Ireland. Most of the production of Glazed Ceramics continues to take place in the Stoke-on-Trent area of Staffordshire.
Proskills works with employers from the Glazed Ceramics Industry to help businesses improve their productivity and competitiveness through skills training. Extensive research and comprehensive employer consultation has identified a need to upskill current and future workforces to enable businesses in this industry to address the challenges they currently face. In particular as the current economic climate forces many businesses to make staff cut backs, there is an increasing need for the remaining workforce to multi-skill.
Skills training is required to help business address the following:
- Skills shortages are particularly prevalent among front line staff, technical staff as well at managerial and supervisory level
- To help businesses ride the storm of the current economic climate and credit crunch, particularly with respect to the drop in demand for products
- The need to meet constantly changing consumer demands and preferences
- To support legislation compliance on Health and Safety as well as Environmental Management, in particular the impact of REACH (Regulation, Evaluation & Authorisation of Chemicals) Legislation
- To improve efficiencies by tightening up processes to tackle the issue of rising energy costs and the need for more energy-efficient machinery and processes
- To drive business performance improvements to increase national and global competitiveness
- To keep up with technological advances