The wallboard industry has become a challenging business, in which consumers demand virtually finished walls that do not need further treatment and fierce price competition forces manufacturers to work as efficiently as possible. In the process of efficient working, the forming line plays an important role and its belt is a weak link, having to be both reliable and consistently smooth. The belt's flatness determines the quality of production output, whilst downtime for installation, maintenance and repair lays a heavy burden on production efficiency and costs.
Articles on the gypsum industry from Global Gypsum
Global Gypsum Megatrends - Does the past predict the future?
The first time I remember being exposed to the overall concept of 'Megatrends' was about 40 years ago with the publication of 'Future Shock' (Toffler, 1970). This book described the social changes associated with the rapid growth of information and technology change. Since then there have been several books, many with 'Megatrends' (Naisbitt, 1982) in the name, that have described how the future was going to be affected by many factors including globalisation, decentralisation, networking, many choices, women, religion, growth, arts, individual rights, demographics, conscious capitalism, global power shifts, energy, the environment and ethics to name more than a few. The purpose of this article is to take five obvious megatrends of today and to describe how the gypsum industry is likely to be affected by these over the next 15 years.
Japanese gypsum board market profile
Japan's gypsum board industry has faced challenging market conditions during the past two years with the global economic crisis slowing investment in the domestic property market and causing a downturn in demand for construction materials including plasterboard. Global Gypsum Magazine's special correspondent has been to visit Yoshino in Tokyo, and brings back this exclusive report on trends in Japan's gypsum industry.
