China: Sales revenue from China National Building Materials’ (CNBM) new materials business grew by 28% year-on-year to US$3.36bn in the first half of 2021 from US$2.63bn in the first half of 2020. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) from the segment, which includes gypsum producers BNBM and Taishan Gypsum, rose by 66% to US$873m from US527m. The gypsum wallboard producers reported a combined sales volume increase of 41% to 1.12Bnm2 from 0.79Bnm2. The group said that BNBM had also been working on the development of the first domestic automatic edge keel packaging machine for a ‘super large’ production line of gypsum wallboard with an output of 120Mm2/yr.
Overall across all business lines the group’s revenue grew by 14% to US$18.9bn from US$16.5bn in the same period in 2020. Adjusted EBITDA rose by 13% to US$3.98bn from US$3.51bn. Total revenue benefitted from particular gains from its New Materials and Engineering businesses.