China clay occurs in the deposits in the form of china clay rock, a mixture of up to 15 per cent china clay and up to 10 per cent mica, and the remainder being quartz.

One of the purest of the clays, composed chiefly of the mineral kaolinite usually formed when granite is changed by hydrothermal metamorphism. Usage of the terms china clay and kaolin is not well defined; sometimes they are used synonymously for a group of similar clays, and sometimes kaolin refers to those obtained in the United States and china clay to those that are imported. Some authorities term as china clays the more plastic of the kaolins. China clays have long been used in the ceramic industry, especially in fine porcelains, because they can be easily molded, have a fine texture, and are white when fired.

China clay mining is a complicated process which can be split into three distinct sections - opencast mining, refining and drying Known as pit operations, this process firstly requires the removal of ground overlying the clay. This is known as overburden, which can vary in depth between one and fifteen metres. Once the clay is exposed, the method of mining is best described as a hydraulic mining process. This means, quite simply, that a jet of water under enormous pressure is fired at the pit face from a water cannon known in the industry as a monitor. This liberates from the quarry face the china clay, together with sand and mica. The material runs in slurry form to the lowest part of the pit, known as the sink, where it is lifted by centrifugal pumps to mechanical sand classifiers, where the more coarse sand elements are removed. The sand is disposed of on belt conveyors, which deposit it on low profile tips that can then be landscaped and seeded with grass. Having removed the coarsest of the sand, the clay suspension is then transported by underground pipeline to the second process: refining.