Journey
Set up a non-metallic mineral products manufacturing business
Learning path for new manufacturers of glass, ceramics, cement, lime, plaster, concrete products and cut stone. Work out which rules apply, put a safe factory and your respirable-silica controls in place, meet the conformity rules for construction and consumer products you sell, handle your environmental permit and UK Emissions Trading Scheme duties if you run a kiln or furnace, and verify everything with a compliance checklist.
What this journey is for
Making non-metallic mineral products — glass, ceramics, cement, lime, concrete and stone — puts you among the dust- and energy-intensive manufacturing trades, with duties that begin before your first product leaves the works. You have to keep your people safe around kilns, crushing plant and the respirable silica that mineral processing throws off, get the conformity right on the construction and consumer products you sell, and — if you run a cement, lime, glass or ceramics kiln or furnace — hold an environmental permit and meet your carbon duties under the UK Emissions Trading Scheme. This journey walks you through that path in the order you will live it, from working out which rules apply through to checking you have everything in place.
It does not give you the step-by-step instructions or the figures — those live in the guides it points to. This is the map: it tells you where you are, why each stage matters, and which guide to open next.
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Work out which regulations apply to you
Start by getting the picture right. This sector covers very different businesses — a small ceramics studio, a ready-mixed concrete plant, a glassworks and a cement kiln share a workplace-safety and silica foundation but then follow sharply different product and environmental rules. The energy-intensive duties — the environmental permit and emissions trading — only bite if you run a kiln or furnace. Working this out first saves you from discovering a missed obligation late. Use the router guide to find your route before you commit to anything.
Which non-metallic mineral products manufacturing regulations apply to your business
Work out which rules apply to what you make. A reference guide that routes you from the shared workplace-safety and silica foundation to the right path — general production, placing products on the market, or running an energy-intensive installation.
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Put your safe-factory and silica-control foundations in place
Whatever you make, this is the universal spine. Risk-assess the work, control exposure to respirable crystalline silica and other substances under COSHH — with local exhaust ventilation and water suppression — keep your kilns, crushers and conveyors safeguarded under PUWER, manage manual handling of heavy materials, carry out your fire risk assessment, hold employers' liability insurance, and meet your equality and data protection duties. Build this in from the start rather than retrofitting it.
Set up and run a safe mineral products factory
The duties every manufacturer shares — general health and safety, respirable-silica COSHH controls, work equipment (PUWER), manual handling, fire safety, employers' liability insurance, equality and data protection.
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Meet the conformity rules for what you sell
If you place products on the market, they must meet the right regime. Cement, aggregates, concrete products and construction glass are construction products and need a declaration of performance and conformity marking (UKCA, or CE which is still accepted on the GB market). Other consumer goods must still meet the general product safety duty. These are mostly Great Britain market regimes — if you also supply Northern Ireland, check that position separately under the Windsor Framework. Design conformity in early, because it shapes your production setup.
Place non-metallic mineral products on the market
Get the conformity right on what you sell — construction products (declaration of performance and marking) and the residual general product safety duty for other consumer goods.
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Handle your environmental permit and emissions trading (if you run a kiln or furnace)
If you run a cement, lime, glass or ceramics kiln or furnace, two further duties apply. Your installation needs an environmental permit — from the Environment Agency, NRW, SEPA or NIEA depending on your nation — that controls emissions and sets operating conditions. And cement, lime and glass production fall within the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, so you need a greenhouse gas emissions permit and must monitor, report and surrender allowances for the carbon dioxide you emit. Both turn on the scale and type of your installation, so settle them early — they shape your plant and your costs.
Meet your environmental permit and emissions trading duties
If you run a kiln or furnace — get the environmental permit your installation needs (Environment Agency, NRW, SEPA or NIEA) and meet your UK Emissions Trading Scheme duties for cement, lime or glass production.
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Verify you have covered everything
Once the moving parts are in motion, take a step back and check the whole picture holds together. A compliance checklist lets you confirm, in one place, that each obligation — workplace, product, environmental and emissions — is genuinely met rather than assumed. Use it as your readiness review before your first production run, and come back to it as your product range or processes change.
Non-metallic mineral products manufacturer: compliance checklist
Verify you have covered everything before your first production run — the universal workplace and silica duties, the conformity rules for products you sell, and the environmental permit and emissions-trading duties for energy-intensive installations.
You will also need the general business set-up duties
Alongside the sector-specific path above, every manufacturing business carries general obligations that are not unique to mineral products but are just as compulsory. As you build the business you will also need to:
- protect the people who work for you — meet your workplace health and safety duties, including the COSHH assessments that bite hard around respirable crystalline silica.
- hold employers' liability insurance once you take anyone on.
- handle personal data lawfully — most businesses must complete data protection registration with the ICO.
- meet your fire safety duties for the premises you work from, which matter wherever you run high-temperature processes and store fuels and dust.
These general duties run in parallel with the sector path rather than after it, so set them up as you establish the business. The safe-factory spine and the compliance checklist bring the core duties together so you can confirm they are covered.
Where this leaves you
You now have the shape of the whole task: work out which rules apply, put a safe factory and your silica controls in place, meet the conformity rules for what you sell, handle your environmental permit and emissions-trading duties if you run a kiln or furnace, and verify the lot. Work the guides in order and you will have a clear, defensible position from your first production run onwards.