Rapid Growth of Flat Glass Production

With the push of investments in the fixed assets and rapid growth of downstream products, flat glass output tends to increase rapidly. From January to July, the total output of flat glass in China was 339 million weight cases, an increase of 9.4% year-on-year, among which the output of float glass was 279 million weight cases, up 11.4%. Except for being directly used in buildings, about 30% of flat glass were used for processing technical glass.

In recent years, due to the increasing demands fro technical glass in international and China domestic markets, the output of technical glass has increased rapidly, and demanded for more flat glass. Though there were many new productive capacity of flat glass in 2007 and the export volume of flat glass in the first half of the year dropped by 21.3%, the technical glass output such as laminated glass, tempered glass and hollow glass was 98.24 million square meters from January to July, risen by 19% year-on-year.

However, generally speaking, the production, sale and storage of flat glass remain stable up to now. As to the output of main sources, Hebei and Zhejiang has kept a rapid growth of flat glass output, respectively increased by 16.5% and 55% while Jiangsu and Guangdong dropped by 14.2% and 4.7%.