I. Why Henan's "Hard Earth" Deserves Its Own Study

When people hear "non-metallic mineral products," their first thought is usually cement and glass — the two basic industrial materials. Plain, heavy, easy to overlook, yet a faithful mirror of a province's infrastructure and manufacturing base. In Henan, this industry is far more than cement and glass.

By the fifth national economic census, at the end of 2023 Henan had roughly 27,000 legal-entity firms in non-metallic mineral products, placing it among the top three industrial categories in the province by count. Together with electronics manufacturing, non-ferrous metal smelting, and a few other large categories, the top five industries posted combined operating revenue of over RMB 2.57 trillion, more than 40% of provincial industry. A province that concentrates so many factories around "earth and fire" does so on the strength of the Central Plains' abundant limestone, silica sand, bauxite, and clay deposits, together with decades of accumulated kiln, firing, and processing know-how.

What is more striking is the layering. This is not a stack of one product category but several heavyweight cards held at once: Luoyang is the birthplace of China's float-glass process; Gongyi is a major national producing area for bauxite refractories; Ruzhou and Yuzhou have turned Ru ware and Jun ware — two storied porcelains — into industries; Changge and Neihuang form a pole of their own in sanitary and building ceramics; and a province-wide cement-clinker network runs beneath it all. This report does not try to squeeze Henan into the generic label of "building-materials powerhouse." Instead, it explains each of these blocks in turn: where each takes root, and what kind of customer opportunity each leaves for upstream suppliers.

II. Luoyang: Where China's Float-Glass Process Was Born

The most recognizable card in Henan's non-metallic mineral products is Luoyang's glass.

In 1971, China's first float-glass production line was completed and commissioned at the Luoyang Glass Works; in 1981, this homegrown process was formally named the "Luoyang Float Glass Process," ranking alongside Britain's Pilkington process and America's Pittsburgh process as one of the world's three float-glass processes. It is one of the few original achievements in China's glass industry to be named on par with the international ones. The China Luoyang Float Glass Group, which carries this history, was founded in 1956 and over the decades moved from ordinary float glass all the way to ultra-thin glass for electronic displays; its ultra-thin glass has long held around a 90% domestic market share, making it a player extremely hard to replace on this track.

Luoyang's path is a classic story of "moving up." Rather than stay in scale competition over ordinary architectural glass, through several rounds of restructuring it shifted its core business from thick glass toward higher-value directions — ultra-thin electronic-display glass, photovoltaic glass, and solar-thermal glass — and its listed entity was later renamed Kaisheng New Energy, becoming one of China's important production bases for ultra-thin electronic-display float-glass substrates, PV glass, and solar-thermal glass. From a piece of ordinary architectural glass to the specialty glass behind phone cover plates, display panels, and PV modules, Luoyang takes the route of trading process upgrades for value rather than winning on sheer capacity.

The moat here is technological and process accumulation, and so are its constraints: ultra-thin and specialty glass depend heavily on formulation, furnace control, and continuous stable operation; the technical threshold is high, the investment heavy, and once a line is lit it is not easily stopped. To understand Luoyang glass, one must first accept that it runs a "deep but narrow" business — taking a once-heavy traditional material to the precision the display and new-energy supply chains can use.

III. Gongyi: Turning Stone into a Major National Capital of Refractories

If Luoyang speaks to the precision of glass, Gongyi speaks to the depth of refractories.

Sitting in the Central Plains and rich in clay and bauxite, Gongyi is one of China's important refractory production bases. It has more than 470 refractory firms, over 160 of them above designated size, with output accounting for about a third of Zhengzhou's and roughly a quarter of Henan's — a genuine industrial stronghold. What it has accumulated is not only capacity but a research and supporting system built around refractories: academician workstations, provincial engineering technology research centers, and enterprise technology centers have landed one after another, and the local park has been recognized as a characteristic refractory industrial cluster. Refractories are the "lining" of every high-temperature industry — steel, cement, glass, non-ferrous smelting — so downstream demand is broad and rigid, giving Gongyi a very stable footing.

Worth noting is that Gongyi is at the same time a major national aluminum-processing base, with the aluminum and refractory chains interwoven here. Bauxite is both a raw material for smelting aluminum and a key raw material for refractories, and this overlap of resource and industry gives Gongyi a cluster density in "earth and fire" that is hard to replicate elsewhere. Its transformation agenda is clear too: from competing on output and price toward competing on formulation, customization, and the high end — turning generic refractory bricks into custom linings tailored to specific furnace conditions.

IV. Ruzhou and Yuzhou: Turning Two Storied Porcelains into Industries

The segment with the most cultural weight in this industry hides in two not-so-large cities — Ruzhou's Ru ware and Yuzhou's Jun ware.

Ru ware ranks first among the five great porcelains of the Song dynasty, prized for the gentle warmth of its sky-blue glaze; Jun ware is famed for its kiln transmutation — "one color into the kiln, ten thousand colors out." Both are peaks in the history of Chinese ceramics. Remarkably, Henan has not left them in museums but turned that heritage into industry. By public reports, Ruzhou has more than 800 registered units engaged in Ru-ware research, production, and sales, including over 300 specialized firms, with products reaching more than 30 countries and regions including Japan, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, and a Ru-ware industry whose annual output value already exceeds RMB 10 billion. Yuzhou's Jun-ware industry is equally substantial — nearly 200 Jun-ware production firms employing about 28,000 people and producing over 2.2 million pieces (sets) of Jun ware a year, with a complete production-and-sales cluster centered on Shenhou Town, which is accordingly known as "China's Capital of Jun Ware."

The logic of these two blocks is entirely different from cement and glass. It is not about scale and cost but about craft, culture, and scarcity. Glaze formulation, transmutation control, hand-forming — the very steps that resist standardization — are where its value lies, and its barrier to replication. To understand Ruzhou and Yuzhou, one must first accept that they run a "narrow but deep" business — taking a niche category to something the nation has nowhere else, on the strength of generations of artisans' command of clay, glaze, and fire.

V. Changge and Neihuang: The Other Pole, Built on Sanitary and Building Ceramics

Henan's non-metallic mineral products also has a face closer to the mass market, in places like Changge and Neihuang.

Changge's sanitary-ware industry spans more than 50 years and is one of China's important production bases for sanitary ceramics and bathroom cabinets, awarded the title of "Central China Sanitary Ware Industry Base," serving the domestic market with tens of millions of pieces of sanitary ceramics and over ten million sets of bathroom cabinets a year. Neihuang is another leader of Henan's ceramics industry, awarded the title of "Central Plains Ceramics Industry Base," and is one of the few comprehensive ceramics bases in the province covering building ceramics, sanitary ceramics, art ceramics, and daily-use ceramics at once. Beyond these, Henan has formed more than ten building-ceramics clusters in Hebi, Ruyang, Neixiang, Xixian, and elsewhere, gradually taking over building-ceramics capacity that was once concentrated on the coast.

This block is about scaled manufacturing and shipping radius. Building ceramics and sanitary ware are heavy and costly to transport, so building factories near the central consumption heartland is itself a cost advantage; abundant clay and feldspar, plus relatively low energy and labor costs, are what give Henan the footing to absorb relocated building-ceramics capacity. Its challenges are those shared by all scaled building materials: capacity-cycle swings, tightening environmental and energy-consumption limits, and fierce homogeneous competition. The way out is to differentiate generic products through design and brand.

VI. The Base Running Through the Province: the Cement-Clinker Network

Before assembling the blocks above, there is one more layer — the broadest and least conspicuous of all — cement.

Henan is a major cement-producing and cement-consuming province, with clinker lines spread across the territory. This block has lately gone through a notable consolidation: China United Cement and Henan Investment Group jointly established Henan Zhongtong Tongli Materials Co., with business covering more than ten cities provincewide, annual clinker capacity of about 30 million tonnes and cement capacity of about 40 million tonnes; after the merger its clinker capacity exceeded 28 million tonnes, surpassing Tianrui Group to become the largest cement producer in the province. Tianrui Group, for its part, runs several cement firms in Henan and is one of the nationally key-supported large cement groups, with group clinker capacity ranking among the leaders nationwide. Two dominant players coexisting form the basic pattern of Henan cement.

But cement also reflects the industry's cyclical pressure most plainly. In the first eleven months of 2023, Henan's cement output was about 89.79 million tonnes, down nearly 6% year on year, a steeper drop than the national average; the province's dozens of common-cement clinker lines logged over 14,389 kiln-idle days that year, markedly more than the year before, with clinker output down nearly 20%. Shrinking demand, overcapacity, and widespread kiln stoppages are realities this block cannot now avoid. Its direction of transformation, beyond peak-shifting production and reduction-based replacement, is to extend into longer chains — aggregates, ready-mixed concrete, and the co-disposal of solid and hazardous waste — turning a single clinker business into integrated materials supply.

VII. The Upstream: Five Patterns, Five Sets of Procurement

Henan's multi-polar structure in non-metallic mineral products means its upstream procurement also splits into several non-overlapping systems:

  • Silica sand, soda ash, and glass raw materials: Luoyang's float and ultra-thin glass lines demand extremely high silica-sand purity and low iron content; soda ash and dolomite are consumed steadily, while the matching furnace refractories and tin-bath materials are a high-threshold niche
  • Bauxite and clay minerals: Gongyi's refractories and the ceramics of Ruzhou and Yuzhou all depend heavily on high-grade bauxite, clay, and kaolin, where the raw material's origin, grade, and stable supply directly decide product quality
  • Glazes, pigments, and chemical additives: Ru ware, Jun ware, and sanitary/building ceramics need large volumes of glazes, pigments, bodies, and additives — and the glaze formulation of the storied porcelains carries a very high threshold, an under-appreciated niche
  • Limestone and cement ingredients: the province-wide clinker network is a steady buyer of limestone, iron powder, fly ash, and slag, where mine resources and shipping radius are the keys to the business
  • Kiln, firing, and processing equipment: from glass melting furnaces, ceramic roller kilns, and cement rotary kilns to press machines, polishing lines, and glass deep-processing equipment, equipment procurement here spans both high-temperature firing and precision processing — a richly layered demand

These five demand sets map to five distinct factory groups — glass, refractories, storied porcelains, building/sanitary ceramics, and cement. An upstream salesperson who views Henan only as "selling to cement plants" or "selling to glass plants" can easily miss three or four of them.

Sales teams supplying these factories with silica sand, bauxite, soda ash, glazes and pigments, limestone ingredients, or kiln and deep-processing equipment can use Tianxia Gongchang to filter, along the two dimensions of Henan × non-metallic mineral products, the factory directories and decision-maker contacts across glass, refractories, ceramics, sanitary ware, and cement — turning a category-by-category, factory-by-factory hunt into following a map.

VIII. The Institute's Observation

Drawing the blocks of Henan's non-metallic mineral products together, what emerges is an under-appreciated depth: an original process in Luoyang float glass named on par with the world's; a resource-driven cluster in Gongyi that turned stone into a major national producing area; the cultural scarcity of two storied porcelains in Ru and Jun ware; absorbed building-ceramics and sanitary capacity relocated from the coast; and beneath it all a clinker network spread across the province. Technology, resources, culture, and scale — four logics holding at once within a single industry in a single province — is not common.

The variables in this structure lie in each block's own question. Glass turns on whether it can keep cashing its ultra-thin and specialty lead into display and new-energy demand; refractories and building ceramics on whether they can shift from output toward formulation and customization; the storied porcelains on whether they can open a larger market while keeping their craft; and cement on whether it can outlast the downturn and overcapacity through peak-shifting, reduction, and chain extension.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute's view is this: the weight of this industry in Henan lies not in any single national ranking it holds in cement or glass, but in the fact that, on the oldest of industries — earth and fire — it has pulled off four things of varying difficulty at once: original process, resource cluster, cultural porcelain, and scaled manufacturing. That depth was fired together by the Central Plains' mineral deposits, decades of kiln fire, and generation upon generation of artisans, and is hard for another province to replicate whole. For upstream suppliers, recognizing that Henan is not one building-materials market but five — distinct in logic and offset in cycle — is precisely the premise for efficiently developing factory customers in Henan's non-metallic mineral products.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Henan non-metallic mineral products factory directory and industry data)
  • Bulletin No. 3 of Henan's Fifth National Economic Census — Henan and Zhengzhou Statistics Bureaus (~27,000 legal-entity firms in non-metallic mineral products at end-2023, a top-3 industrial category; top five industries' combined operating revenue RMB 2,574.7 billion, over 40% of provincial industry)
  • Commemorating 50 Years of the "Luoyang Float Glass Process" — China National Building Material Group (China's first float-glass line completed in Luoyang in 1971; named "Luoyang Float Glass Process" in 1981, one of the world's three float-glass processes alongside Pilkington and Pittsburgh)
  • Profile of China Luoyang Float Glass Group and related reporting — CNBM, China Luoyang Float Glass Group (founded 1956; ultra-thin glass ~90% domestic share; listed entity renamed Kaisheng New Energy, shifting to ultra-thin electronic-display, PV, and solar-thermal glass)
  • Gongyi: Accelerating Refractory Industry Upgrading; Gongyi as a Strong Industrial County — Zhengzhou Municipal Government (470+ refractory firms, 167 above designated size; output ~a third of Zhengzhou's and ~a quarter of Henan's; recognized characteristic refractory cluster; also a major aluminum-processing base)
  • CCTV on Henan · Ruzhou Burnishing the Ru-Ware Brand; Ruzhou, China's Hometown of Ru-Ware Culture — Henan Department of Culture and Tourism, Ruzhou Municipal Government (800+ registered Ru-ware units, 300+ specialized firms; products to 30+ countries and regions; industry annual output over RMB 10 billion)
  • Reporting on the 12th Yuzhou Jun-Ware Culture and Tourism Festival — Xuchang Municipal Government (nearly 200 Jun-ware firms; ~28,000 employees; 2.2M+ pieces/sets a year; cluster centered on Shenhou Town)
  • "Central China Sanitary Ware Industry Base" Changge; Neihuang's "Ceramic Dream"; Henan Lands 35 Building-Ceramics Firms in Three Years — China Ceramics Net, Ceramics Information Net (Changge awarded Central China Sanitary Ware base, tens of millions of sanitary-ceramic pieces and 10M+ bathroom-cabinet sets a year; Neihuang awarded Central Plains Ceramics base, a comprehensive ceramics base; 10+ building-ceramics clusters provincewide)
  • China United Cement and Henan Investment Group Establish RMB 10bn JV; Henan Zhongtong Tongli Materials Co. Registered — CNBM, Sina Tech (Henan Zhongtong Tongli covers 10+ cities; ~30M tonnes clinker and ~40M tonnes cement capacity; post-merger clinker capacity over 28M tonnes, first in the province)
  • Profile of Tianrui Group; Tianrui Cement Named a Henan Manufacturing "Lead Goose" Firm Three Years Running — China Industry News, China Cement Net (Tianrui a nationally key-supported large cement group, several cement firms in Henan, clinker and cement capacity among national leaders)
  • Wang Aizhen: Province-Wide Cement Losses; Building-Materials Industry Operations — Henan Building Materials Association, NDRC (Henan cement output ~89.79M tonnes in first 11 months of 2023, down nearly 6% YoY; province's common-cement clinker lines logged over 14,389 kiln-idle days; clinker output down nearly 20%)