Materials Manufacturing

Manufactured materials are used in construction, industry equipment, consumer products, commercial products and find applications as components, parts and integration into various products, machinery and assorted infrastructure. Materials manufacturing represents a value-adding activity that involves the processing, shaping or forming, morphological altering, hardening, softening, alloying, mixing, blending, firing, heating, and chemical altering of raw materials and other feedstocks to result in marketable materials.

Many manufactured materials are also commodities that are produced in mass quantities and at volumes that result in them being affected by trends in demand and supply. The materials manufacturing industry is an essential supplier of components to consumer-facing, value-added industries and end product manufacturing companies. Input resources to the materials manufacturing industry include wood, assorted wastes, soils, sand, minerals, metals, gravel, stones, petroleum-derived substances and biologically-sourced materials such as animal hair, silks, bones, waxes, and non-wood cellulosic materials.

The materials manufacturing industry represents the starting point of a variety of product and equipment supply chains that also connect value-added industries and OEMs with end users and product consumers. Various examples of manufactured materials include bricks, concrete pipes, gypsum boards, drywall, metal sheeting, metal ingots, particle board, milled pieces of lumber, ivory pieces, waxes, compressed wood chip materials, cement, pitch, paper, pulps, bottles, containers, packaging materials, fibers, wires, refractory (ceramic) structures and pieces, mortars, assorted material mixtures, and glass sheets and panels. The high weights and volumes of unfinished product materials has ensured the distribution of material manufacturing industry activities throughout economies in Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Africa.