On July 16th, a ceramic company in Danleng County, Sichuan Province, told Ceramic Town Weekly (CTW) that ceramic companies’ excessive emissions in Danleng Ceramic Park badly impact the surrounding grapes, against which the farmers strongly protested. Under pressure, ceramic enterprises in the park were to suspend production for environmental remediation from July 20th.

It is learned that, on the north of Jiajiang County, Danleng is located within Chengdu Economic Zone and ChengYu (Chengdu & Chongqing) Economic Zone. Founded on November 25th, 2006, Danleng Ceramic Building Material Park is a distinctive park focusing on high-end ceramic tiles and new building materials industry, as well as an important ceramic building materials industry base in Southeast China.

Viticulture farming is one of the pillar industries in Danleng, where the planted areas reach nearly 33.34 km², with a  total production value of nearly 300 million RMB.

The government said, when to resume production depends on ceramic enterprises’ progress of environmental remediation. A ceramics company manager tells us that they expect the cut-off will last until the harvest in August. Though local enterprises have entered the off-season from the beginning of May, all of them have enough stocks.

By far, it has been assured that 7 production lines will be shut down on around 20th this month in Danleng area, 6 out of which are within the park. It is possible that other companies outside the park may also have to stop producing temporarily, and the period of shutdown has not been determined yet.

Due to insufficient supply of natural gas, the establishment of water gas stations may have potential influence on local environmental protection. Even if upgrading the water gas furnace technologically, few ceramic enterprises can bear the enormous cost of environmental transformation when sales are sluggish. It is learned that it costs at least tens of millions RMB to build a clean energy station while only over 3 million RMB to invest in an ordinary water gas furnace. Therefore, the high price in clean energy scares away many companies.

Editor Li Xiaojuan, Deng Shiya

This is the 13th issue.