Despite the fact that the Greek state had issued a decree for the Reanimation of the National Industry since 1837, throughout the 19th century development in the industrial sector was minimal. The period between the mid-1860s to the mid-1870s marked the first stage of development of the secondary sector of production. A period of stagnation and decline in the rate of development ensued, which was reversed only at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The first manufacturing companies were involved in low-skill production connected with agriculture and they were mainly the flour, olive oil, soap and silk industries, distilleries, spinning mills, tanneries etc. The products, however, were not of high quality: flour and olive oil underwent initial processing only, thick yarns, thick leather for shoe-soles etc. Naturally, there was little margin left for profit.

In the 19th century, almost two-thirds of Greek society was employed in the agricultural sector. In the first phase of its development, industry was in a position to absorb up to a certain extent the exodus from the countryside. Later, however, as the large emigration current at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries shows, the manufacturing sector was clearly unable to employ the surplus of the primary sector due to both its size and the structure of production.

At the same time, the use of new technological means was not particularly widespread. Undoubtedly, the state especially under the Trikoupis administration tried, despite its protective tariff policy, to ensure the importation of raw materials and machinery free of tariffs. So, in Piraeus and Syros certain units involved in the machine-making and shipbuilding sectors appeared that had abandoned traditional manual production for other more technologically advanced methods. At this point it is worth noting that in these cases the plants were given over to multiple uses. The steam-mills were also used as olive presses and brimstone processing units and the gunpowder plant in Athens, at least in the initial phase of its operation, also produced lead pipes and white lead. This diversification in their activities can be explained on the one hand by the fact that these units could not have survived otherwise, if they were to be vertically integrated and specialized, because their turnover would not allow them to be viable, and on the other that it covered the actual needs of the market which the limited technological infrastructure would not otherwise have been covered.