Gypsum industry news

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.

France: Expansion plans for a gypsum quarry supporting Placoplatre’s wallboard plant in Chambéry have been scaled back. A 1000 hectare expansion was originally proposed for the Gypse de Maurienne quarry near to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, according to the Le Dauphiné libéré newspaper. However, following local objections, this has been reduced to 60 hectares. The intention by the subsidiary of Saint-Gobain is to secure sufficient raw gypsum supplies for 30 years.

France: A public enquiry into Saint-Gobain subsidiary Placoplatre's plans to establish a gypsum quarry at Fort Vaujours, Seine-Saint-Denis, opened earlier in November 2022. The producer plans to use the new site to serve its Vaujours gypsum wallboard plant as a replacement for its Bernouille quarry after the latter closes in 2026. The 65Mm²/yr facility consumes 900,000t/yr of natural gypsum.

Eco group Environnement 93 has protested the anticipated enviromental impacts of opening a quarry of sufficient size to reach the gypsum deposit 25m below ground. Placoplatre's proposal consists of a three-stage approach in which it demolishes buildings, clears any hazardous residues from the site's military and nuclear power testing history and only then commences extraction. The company plans to restore part of the site after mining is completed. The enquiry will run until 23 December 2022.

France: Placo and Serfim Recyclage have revealed that they started operating a new 140t/day plaster recycling plant at Quincy-Voisins near Paris in October 2021. The companies say that the Pari Plâtre site is the first in the Paris region to be solely used for recycling plaster waste from construction sites.

Daily deliveries via the Placo Recycling network bring plaster waste from within a 250km radius to the site. The waste is then sorted by hand along an 80m production line to remove wood, ceramic, cardboard and polystyrene fractions. These materials are recycled separately. The plaster is crushed and screened with a 98% recovery rate. The plant stores reclaimed gypsum in two 80m³ silos. The gypsum is then transported to Placo’s gypsum wallboard plant at Vaujours for use as a secondary raw material.

Placo says it is the leading recycler of gypsum in France. Following the opening of Pari Plâtre the company has increased its plaster recycling target in 2030 target to 200,000t/yr. This will allow the subsidiary of Saint-Gobain to use up to 30% of recycled materials in the production of its wallboard products.

France: Workers at Placoplâtre’s gypsum quarry in Baillet-en-France near Paris went on strike in late January 2022 following a breakdown in negotiations with management. The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) union has cited disagreements over changes to shift patterns, safety concerns and poor equipment, according to the Le Parisien newspaper. Placoplâtre responded that discussions are ongoing. A worker died at the mine in 2019 when a gallery roof collapsed.

France: Environmental concerns have been raised about Placoplatre's plans to develop a open-cast gypsum quarry at Fort de Vaujours near Paris. The site is believed to contain enough high-end gypsum for the Saint-Gobain subsidiary's nearby wallboard plant and for other plants in the group, according to Deutsche Welle. However, environmentalists have raised the risks of excavating a site near to the capital of France that was used for nuclear testing between the 1950s and 1990s.

"It's important to maintain our plant. We employ 400 people at the factory which generates 3000 indirect jobs and an additional average 1000 workers will be operating at the industrial site," said Gilles Bouchet, Placoplatre's head of mining development. He added that the wallboard producer has conducted impact and radiation studies that have been submitted to the French nuclear safety body ASN.

Christophe Nedelec, president of environmental non-government organisation Gagny-Les Abbesses-Chelles has queried the efficacy of Placoplatre's tests and has called for an independent body to conduct them.