Gypsum industry news

Belgium: Saint-Gobain says that it has entered into exclusive negotiations with Ponsardin Industries for the sale of SFIC Belgium, a specialist construction materials distribution business of gypsum wallboard, insulation and ceilings. The Belgium-based business has forecast sales of €75m in 2025, has 123 employees and it operates a network of 10 branches. The transaction is subject to the completion of an ‘information and consultation procedure’ with the relevant employee representative bodies. The divestment is expected to be finalised by the end of 2025. No value for the transaction has been disclosed.

Belgium: Etex says that its financial performance over the first half of 2025 showed ‘significant resilience’ in a construction environment still largely depressed and marked by unpredictability. Compared to the first half of 2024, the company posted stable sales volumes, sustained healthy margins and achieved improved operational performance. The results were consistent with Etex’s expectations for the period.

Etex’s revenues for the six month period came to €1.93bn, a 0.2% decline compared to the same period of 2024. On a like-for-like basis, sales increased by 1.5%. The group’s recurring earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation amounted to €353m, a 6.4% fall compared to the first half of 2024. Its net recurring profit fell by 17.8% to €125m. The company said that this was due to the falling REBITDA combined with the impact of currency exchange on net financial charges. However, the company’s net profit for the first half rose to €115m.

Etex said that it was aiming for stable performance across all its businesses versus 2024 despite anticipated market volatility. It will continue to invest in manufacturing facilities, to progress in sustainability efforts, to actively pursue strategic opportunities and to implement the cost reduction programmes launched in 2024.

Bernard Delvaux, CEO of Etex, said “Our first-half results are in line with our forecasts, despite a market recovery that is taking longer than anticipated. While some geographies remain challenging, we are seeing encouraging performance in regions like Latin America and Southern Europe.”

“Compared to the first half of 2024, this year has been more demanding with further declines in demand across some important markets. However, we have made significant efforts to control costs and maintain margins, achieving notable progress in product and operational performance as well as profitability. This translates into stable revenue and sustained healthy margins.”

“As we expect momentum to gradually rebuild in 2026, we continue to prepare for future growth, including with the inauguration of our brand-new plasterboard line in Bristol, UK, in March 2025, €65m of investments in Latin America as well as innovation in our products and solutions.”

Belgium: Etex has renewed its five-year collaboration with Cognizant for the latter’s generative AI services. Etex says that the partnership will continue to optimise applications, security and data management, with a view to reducing its costs.

Europe: Etex has reported a solid financial performance aligned with its 2024 forecasts, despite experiencing market contractions across Europe in the new build and renovation sectors. Revenue fell 4.2% year-on-year to €1.93bn, with a recurring earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (REBITDA) decrease of 5% year-on-year to €377m. The company’s outlook for the rest of 2024 is a careful and regular evaluation in response to the current volatile market situation.

Belgium: Etex says that it ‘considerably’ progressed its Road to Sustainability 2030 plan during 2023. That year, safety intensity increased by 7%, and Etex established a global diversity, equity and inclusion ambassador community of 110 volunteers across 26 countries. In Europe, the company achieved 70% Environmental Product Declaration coverage as a percentage of its turnover, up from 58% in 2022. Etex raised its total use of recycled materials to 7.6%, and achieved a 23% reduction in Scopes 1 and 2 CO₂ compared to 2018 levels, in line with its 2030 target of 35%.

CEO Bernard Delvaux said “In the EU, more than 40% of energy consumed is used in buildings and more than 30% of energy-related greenhouse gasses emissions come from buildings. Next to new building activities, and according to current high energy standards, renovating old building stock should hence be a top priority. With our portfolio of building materials such as glass wool and extruded polystyrene insulation, gypsum wallboard, fibre cement boards and fire protection materials, Etex has the solutions to reach the ambitious targets. But in view of the huge challenge, a holistic and effective plan to boost renovation is needed, to finance and simplify the renovation process, in each of the EU countries.”

Belgium: Christoph Dorn has been elected as the new president of Eurogypsum, the Brussels-based European association representing the gypsum supply and processing industry. Dorn, a member of the Group Management Committee for Knauf Central Europe, takes over from Dr. Jörg Ertle of the Etex Group.

Dorn said "Taking over the presidency of Eurogypsum in 2024 is a great honour, as the gypsum industry has much to offer, sourcing domestic and multi-recyclable materials to decarbonise Europe’s buildings."

Belgium: Etex reported sales of €3.81bn in 2023, up by 2.5% from 2022 levels. The company's recurring earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (REBITDA) rose by 10% to €712m. It also raised its capital expenditure for the year, to €371m. Etex says that it was Europe’s leading gypsum recycling performer, with a recycling rate of 8.6% of all gypsum used. The group is ‘actively preparing’ to help rebuild Ukraine as soon as conditions permit.

CEO Bernard Delvaux said “Even more so than 2022, 2023 was a challenging year marked by volatility, uncertainty and severe drops in demand across the world, as we observed the continued impacts of increased energy prices and interest rates. Combined with tougher financing possibilities by banks, all these circumstances meant that both renovation and new construction levels dropped globally. Devaluation of some foreign currencies and hyperinflation accounting also had significant effects on our results. Despite all these challenges, I am extremely proud to share that Etex navigated these difficult waters very well and delivered yet again another record year. This includes our highest ever revenue and REBITDA, among others. This strong performance stems from our anticipation in making strategic decisions and changes at global, regional and local levels, ensuring continued proximity with our customers. This is also a result of even tighter cost monitoring in 2023, without ever losing sight of our long-term ambitions and continuing to improve our strong industrial footprint.”

Belgium: Etex’s Building Performance division drove revenue in the first half of 2023 through price rises despite a softening in gypsum wallboard sales volumes. The group’s total revenue grew by 4% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis to Euro2.02bn in the first half of 2023 from Euro1.79bn in the same period 2022. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 14% to Euro363m from Euro319m in real terms.

Bernard Delvaux, the chief executive officer of Etex, said “In the first half of 2023, Etex coped with an overall slowdown of the construction sector - both in new build and renovation - triggered by several elements leading to high volatility and uncertainty such as inflation that puts pressure on consumers’ buying power, higher interest rates and more restricted loan policies by banks. However, Etex managed to record improved sales compared to the first half of 2022 through swift adaptations to challenging market contexts and cost-to-price monitoring. While our volumes are slightly impacted, margins remain strong.”

Notable events so far in 2023 include Etex’s acquisition of UK-based Superglass Insulation in June 2023. It divested its two Russia-based units under its Ursa subsidiary in August 2023. It also acquired Betacon, a Romania-based company to secure raw material supply for wallboard activities in the country.

Eurogypsum added its views on the European Union’s (EU) proposed Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) last month. It wants gypsum to be added to the bill’s list of critical and strategic raw materials. It is not surprising that the European federation of national associations of producers of gypsum products might want to do this. However, when compared to rare earth minerals of the sort required to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles (EV), gypsum doesn’t seem all that, well, rare.

What may be rare though is people’s patience with new gypsum mines. The association’s argument is that gypsum is indeed abundant in the EU but that accessing it is increasingly becoming difficult. The EU’s sustainability agenda has made the energy efficiency of buildings as important as reducing CO₂ emissions from the transportation sector. Gypsum and other materials used to make lightweight building materials are a way of renovating existing buildings and improving energy efficiency. Therefore it suggests that the act should either recognise gypsum as strategic or introduce a new ‘essential’ category. This would then make the process of extracting gypsum more easy.

This approach ties back to initiatives such as one by the Federal Commission on Geosciences (BLA-GEO) in Germany, which previously started to compile an inventory of the nation’s gypsum deposits with the intention of putting this in front of policy makers. Nor is the gypsum sector alone in targeting the potentially lucrative retrofit market. In May 2023 Daikin, Danfoss, Knauf Insulation, Rockwool, Saint-Gobain, Signify and Velux signed an agreement to promote building energy efficiency in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Radek Bedrna, Knauf Insulation’s managing director for Eastern Europe and Middle East, noted that two thirds of the 43.6m homes in single- and multi-family houses in the CEE region were reportedly built before 1989 and are energy inefficient. The European Commission places transport-related greenhouse gas emissions at about 25% of the region’s total. Renovating buildings fully, by contrast, could save up to 5% of the EU’s emissions. Targeting transport emissions may be a higher priority for the EU but the savings from retrofitting are not trivial either.

Then - on cue in mid-June 2023 - there was an example of the difficulties gypsum product producers can face with building new quarries or enlarging old ones when expansion plans for a gypsum quarry supporting Placoplatre’s wallboard plant in Chambéry in France were scaled back from local opposition. The subsidiary of Saint-Gobain met similar issues in late 2022 when a public enquiry started examining its plans to build a new quarry at Fort Vaujours, Seine-Saint-Denis. This site is intended to serve the Vaujours gypsum wallboard plant as a replacement for its Bernouille quarry after the latter closes in 2026. This one has a happier ending, for the gypsum sector at least, since the project received an environmental permit in late May 2023. One of the key issues that came up in the enquiry was a disagreement over the means of extraction. A local environmental group favoured underground mining but an open-cast approach was preferred by the producer as it would yield much more gypsum. The latter was eventually approved.

What this suggests is that making gypsum an ‘essential’ raw material in Europe requires engagement with the general public as much as legislators. Some people may not like having a wind farm built near where they live but the chances are that there will be less opposition than building a new coal mine. Digging up new gypsum deposits should be presented as more like the former than the latter. Whizzing around in a new EV is generally seen as being more fun than bragging about how great the lamba factor is for one’s house. However, this may change if energy prices keep ticking upwards. Gypsum may not be rare but Eurogypsum and others can make a strong case for it being essential.

Belgium: Eurogypsum, the European federation of national associations of producers of gypsum products, is lobbying for building materials such as gypsum to be included in a list of critical and strategic raw materials as part of the European Union’s (EU) proposed Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). The organisation welcomes the CRMA but wants it to also consider the energy renovation of the building stock in addition to raw earth minerals such as those required to build batteries. It has suggested either amending the proposed act to include certain building materials as strategic or introducing a new category of ‘essential’ raw materials, with streamlined permitting processes and access to finance.

It noted that Europe was, in principle, self sufficient in gypsum due to abundant deposits. However, it said that, “increasing difficulties in the access to extractive permits, combined with the foreseen reduction of alternative gypsum sources from the flue gas desulphurisation of coal power plants in the energy transition, are raising serious concerns about the future supply of this mineral essential for the construction and renovation of buildings.”

The CRMA was originally announced by EU President Ursula von der Leyen in September 2022 before being formally proposed in March 2023. It is now being considered by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union.