4.14.2.1 Production

At present, most of wollastonite deposits are mined by the open-pit method, and a few of them ( e.g. the Lijiaxiang mine, Changxing County, Zhejiang Province) are exploited by the underground method. As wollastonite is associated with limestone, wollastonite is usually mined with limestone at the same time. As the ore grade of wollastonite in China is high, it is enough to just pick the ores and then crush and grind them. Wollastonite products are divided into 5 categories in China, namely, lump-grain, common powder, fine powder, super-fine powder and acicular powder. 

At present, there are 60 wollastonite production enterprises in China, and their size is generally small. There are 8 enterprises with a production capacity of over 10,000 t/a (shown in Table 4.14.1): They are Tiegongshan of Lishu County, Panshi and  Longjing in Jilin Province, Faku and Jianping in Liaoning Province, Changxing in Zhejiang Province and Pingle in Guangxi Province. The total production capacity of wollastonite mines with designed scale in China in 1997  is over 0.30 million t/a. 

The output of wollastonite was 0.25 million tons in China in 1997 and ranked first in the world, the United States ranked second, and India ranked third. The production of wollastonite in 1994~1997 is listed in Table 4.14.2.

Table 4.14.1Production capacity and production of main wollastonite mines in China

Table 4.14.2Production of wollastonite in China during 1994~1997(¡Á10³ t)

4.14.2.2 Distribution of Production

The distribution of wollastonite mining enterprises is shown in Fig. 4.14.2 and Table 4.14.3.

The wollastonite proudction is mainly concentrated in seven Provinces and autonomous regions: Jilin, Liaoning, Jiangshu, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Hubei and Guangxi. Their output of wollastonite accounts for more than 80% of the Nation's total.