Area guide · Stoke-on-Trent
The Potteries still make pottery — tableware, tiles, technical ceramics and sanitaryware fire in Stoke every day — and the trade's two old adversaries still write the kit list: kiln heat at the ovens, and silica in the clay dust. Around the banks, a large distribution economy grew up along the A500.
The local economy
Ceramics remains real industry here: household-name tableware factories, tile and brick works, sanitaryware and a growing technical-ceramics sector (aerospace and electronics-grade materials) still mix, cast, fire and glaze across the six towns. Around them: distribution parks along the A500 and A50 corridors serving the Midlands-North crossover, a substantial construction and trades base, and the service economy of a quarter-million-person city.
The ceramic works' kit profile is distinctive — heat at one end of the process, fine mineral dust at the other, and hygiene-adjacent glaze handling in between — and it's a profile generic suppliers rarely understand.
Kit by industry
| Local industry | The kit that matters | The spec detail |
|---|---|---|
| Kiln & firing crews | Heat gloves, natural-fibre layers | EN 407 — contact heat decoded; no melting synthetics |
| Clay prep & fettling | FFP3, eye protection, extraction-first | Silica logic — the Potteries' oldest hazard |
| Glaze & casting shops | Nitrile, aprons, washable kit | Glaze slurries follow chemical-glove logic |
| Distribution belt | Hi-vis, S1P trainers, layers | Kit by zone |
| Construction & trades | Site baseline | The list |
The detail that matters
Potters' rot — silicosis — was the Potteries' industrial disease for two centuries, and modern ceramic works run the controls that history bought: extraction and wet methods first, FFP3 where fettling, dry finishing and material handling still make dust, fit-tested properly, with health surveillance behind it. A ceramics buyer asking for 'dust masks' should be handed the terminology page and FFP3 — this is the city where the difference was learned the hard way.
The kiln side runs on EN 407 contact-heat thinking: ware, cranks and kiln furniture hold heat long after the ovens open, and the burns are contact burns — gloves with real contact ratings and forearm cover, in a works culture that treats 'still warm' as the default assumption.
Supply
Questions
By process: FFP3 respiratory protection where clay and glaze dusts form (silica is the historic hazard), EN 407 contact-heat gloves at kilns and ware handling, nitrile and aprons for glaze work, eye protection at fettling and spraying, and washable workwear in rotation. Extraction and wet methods lead; PPE covers the remainder.
Clay bodies and glaze materials contain crystalline silica, and dry processes — fettling, finishing, material handling — release respirable dust that causes silicosis, the disease that defined the industry's history. Modern works control it with extraction, wet working and fit-tested FFP3, backed by health surveillance.
Nationwide from stock, express — ceramic works order heat gloves, FFP3 and rotation workwear alongside the distribution belt's hi-vis and trainers, all through one trade account with embroidery before dispatch.
We supply nationwide from stock — send the roles and headcount and we'll come back with a kit list, embroidered.