Gypsum industry news

France: Saint-Gobain’s sales grew by 14.5% on a like-for-like basis to Euro38.4bn in the first nine months of 2022 compared to Euro32.9bn in the same period in 2021. Strong sales growth was reported in all business lines although sales were driven in particular by the group’s High Performance Solutions business and its Asia-Pacific and North America regions.

The group noted that raw materials, freight and energy costs were growing, especially in Europe. It said that it had hedged around 80% of its natural gas and electricity purchasing needs for 2022 and around 60% for 2023. It has also been preparing continuity plans for its gas-consuming plants in Europe to ensure the flexibility of production to operate with less or alternative energy. The group said that its gypsum wallboard and construction chemicals production lines were “extremely flexible.”

By region the group said it had started the world’s first zero-carbon wallboard production at its Balsta plant in Sweden powered by biogas and ‘green’ electricity. In France it produced and marketed its Placo Infini 13 product, which is said is the first wallboard made from over 50% recycled gypsum.

Croatia: The Croatian Competition Commission (CCA) has started investigating Knauf for alleged market distorting behaviour from 2017 to 2021. In a statement the regulator said that the wallboard producer, has been accused of abusing, “…its dominant position by applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage. Concretely, the complainant claimed that Knauf applied different rebate schemes (discounts) and trading conditions that were not based on objectively justified criteria, which have directly resulted in distortion of competition in the preliminary defined relevant market in drywall gypsum boards.” The CCA will examine whether Knauf’s behaviour breached Articles 8 and 13 of the Croatian Competition Act.

Germany-based Knauf operates one gypsum wallboard plant in the country at Knin.

UK: British Gypsum has started converting its heavy-good vehicle fleet fuel source to the biofuel Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) from diesel. The subsidiary of France-based Saint-Gobain expects to use 75,000l/week of HVO. This means that around 40% of its UK fleet will now operate on HVO fuel, with a further 10% using Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The use of multi-fuelled vehicles at this scale is expected to reduce its carbon emissions by approximately 70% year-on-year.

To support the implementation of HVO vehicles, the company has made several upgrades to site infrastructure that include a HVO refuelling point at its Robertsbridge plant and a new fuel island capable of delivering 110,000l/week at its distribution centre in Gotham.