In October 2013 Cerame-Unie and the British Ceramic Confederation (BCC) organised a site visit for the European Commission in the frame of the discussion on the eco-design for industrial and laboratory furnaces and ovens. The two-day site visit included visits to the CERAM institute and to companies representing five different ceramic sectors: bricks, tiles, tableware, technical ceramics and refractories (DSF refractories).

The eco-design consultation forum is expected to discuss the industrial and laboratory furnaces and ovens in the first half of 2014. The site visits allowed for an opportunity to demonstrate the key messages of the ceramic industry in practice: the fact that there are no generic rules to cover all ‘furnaces’ as each furnace is different and optimised according to the type of product, kiln load, local conditions, etc. In addition, the furnace is only part of the total installation; so any rules or criteria covering only the furnace could hamper the integrated approach to achieve the best energy efficiency at installation level.