20 Examples of Heavy Industry

The heavy industry is the activity that manufactures semi-finished products, which then function as capital goods for the subsequent production of other goods intended for consumption by individuals. For example: cement, fertilizer, man-made fibers.

The production process in heavy industry is, many times, the same as that dedicated to the extraction and transformation of raw Materials in the machinery necessary for production.
Without a doubt, the XIX century was the one that brought the greatest advances in history with respect to industry. The beginning of the revolutionary process took place in rural areas and it was expanding continuously to the most urban sectors of Europe, but undoubtedly it had an exponential growth motivated by the implementation of iron as a material of use, later replaced by steel, which is a alloy that combines iron with carbon and other elements.

Britain It was the country that stood out the most in this modernization process, and consolidated itself as a producer of iron and coal: this gave it a fundamental role at the head of the international heavy industry.

The industrial producing countries, but especially those who were at the forefront of advances in heavy industry, had very high comparative advantages and they ended up exporting their products and techniques to practically the whole world. Since then until the consolidation of the technology and computing, having a heavy industry potential meant being at the forefront of the world economy.

However, heavy industry has some characteristics that make it much more complex than light industry. The products that it produces have the purpose of producing other goods, so there are no characteristics related to the appearance of the product that are valid here: it is usual that heavy industry products do not have too many colors or attractive shapes, but the production companies concentrate their full potential on optimizing the quality of the machinery produced.

For the Productive processes of heavy industry, it is typical that this kind of economic activities generate in return some waste that are extremely harmful to the environment that surrounds the physical space where it is produced: factories tend to expel different types of harmful gases for the atmosphereair pollution), or they usually have waste that they expel into lakes or rivers (water contamination), heavily polluting the environment.

This is why heavy industries tend to be located in regions that are rather isolated from large cities, where few people live and most of those who are there do so only during the day.

Heavy industry is not so intensive in generating workforce, and employees can also be exposed to the different types of pollution that is expelled from there. If governments try to regulate these levels of pollution through legislation, companies often argue that the activity would stop giving revenue and then they should close it, exposing the work of the employees.

The State also has a benefit at the macroeconomic level of heavy industry, since the goods produced are especially expensive and when they are exported, they generate a strong inflow of foreign currency to the country, and above all a potential for industrial development without being exposed to the vicissitudes of needing to import this kind of goods.

Examples of heavy industry

The following list shows some examples of goods produced by heavy industry: