Question

Classify industries of the world on the basis of raw material. Explain their features with examples.

Classify industries of the world on the basis of their raw materials and explain each one of them.

Answer 1

1. Agro-based industries: Agro processing involves the processing of raw materials from the field and the farm into finished products for rural and urban markets. Major agro-processing industries are food processing, sugar, pickles, fruits juices, beverages (tea, coffee and cocoa), spices and oils fats and textiles (cotton, jute, silk), rubber, etc. Agro processing includes canning, producing cream, fruit processing and confectionery. While some preserving techniques, such as drying, fermenting and pickling, have been known since ancient times, these had limited applications to cater to the pre-Industrial Revolution demands.
2. Mineral-based industries: These industries use minerals as a raw material. Some industries use ferrous metallic minerals which contain ferrous (iron), such as iron and steel industries but some use non-ferrous metallic minerals, such as aluminium, copper and jewellery industries. Many industries use non-metallic minerals such as cement and pottery industries.
3. Chemical-based industry: Such industries use natural chemical minerals, e.g. mineral-oil (petroleum) is used in petrochemical industry. Salts, sulphur and potash industries also use natural minerals. Chemical industries are also based on raw materials obtained from wood and coal. Synthetic fibre, plastic, etc. are other examples of chemical based industries.
4. Forest-based industries: The forests provide many major and minor products which are used as raw material. Timber for furniture industry, wood, bamboo and grass for paper industry, lac for lac industries come from forests.
5. Animal-based industries: Leather for leather industry and wool for woollen textiles are obtained from animals. Besides, ivory is also obtained from elephant’s tusks.