The conflict in Ukraine has meant that the supply of ball clay from this country has been cut off, giving rise to a serious setback for the manufacture of porcelain tile, as this raw material was a basic component of most of the formulations of this type of ceramic tiles. Thus, the search for alternatives to Ukrainian ball clays has become a strategic issue in the European ceramic tile industry.
 
This paper proposes the use of a Turkish clays mixture as alternative for the state-of-the art Ukrainian clays mixture in a standard porcelain tile composition. Commercially available clays have been selected from deposits in three different regions of Turkey, namely, Istanbul, Afyon and Konya. The clays were characterized on the basis of their chemical and mineralogical composition, particle size distribution, plasticity index, compactness and firing behaviour. Subsequently, a porcelain tile composition was formulated with these clays, trying to reproduce, as far as possible, the behaviour in the process and the final characteristics of the fired pieces by comparing it with a standard composition using a mixture of Ukrainian clays. To assess this process behaviour, milling, deflocculation, pressing and firing steps were reproduced at laboratory level following procedures similar to those used in the industrial practice.
 
The results obtained have shown that there are clays in Turkey with complementary characteristics that allow them to be used as the exclusive plastic component in a porcelain tile composition free of Ukrainian clay. Thus, very different mineralogy gave rise to a wide range of particle size distribution, plastic index, bulk density and fluxing behaviour so that clays mixtures could be formulated. The composition with the mixture of Turkish clays presented in this work exhibits a behaviour in the different stages of the process, i.e, milling/deflocculation, pressing and firing that is very similar to that of a standard composition with the Ukrainian clay mixture. In addition, the characteristics of fired pieces resulted in a quality suitable for use in the manufacture of the more demanding products of current porcelain tile manufacture.