Gypsum industry news

Russia: Mordovcement has announced that its Euro87m gypsum plant, in the federal region of Mordovia, will be operational by the end of 2012. Doing business as LLC Magma, the Russian cement producer's new plant has four production lines. Its gypsum wallboard line has a capacity of 30Mm2/yr. Its gypsum partition block line has a capacity of 560,000m2/yr. Its gypsum construction block line has a capacity of 100,000t/yr. Its fourth line produces gypsum binder for dry construction mixes at a capacity of 90,000t/yr.

Romania: Siniat Romania plans to start building a gypsum board factory in the southwestern town of Turceni in March 2013.

"We reached an agreement with the Turceni energy complex, which will provide the raw materials for the plant, and this is the reason we considered this investment," said Siniat Romania director general Marc-Andre Fritsche.

Belgium's Etex group, which controls Siniat Romania, will finance the plant's construction. The investment is estimated at tens of millions of Euros. The plant is scheduled to start operations from the beginning of 2015.

Siniat Romania, formerly Lafarge Arcom Gips, reported a turnover of Euro22.6m in 2011 and projects a slight increase for 2012. Siniat runs a gypsum board plant in Bucharest and a plant for plasters and coatings in the northwestern county of Cluj. Currently 35% of its total output is exported.

Bulgaria: Bulgarian building materials maker Gips has launched a Euro8m factory for the calcination of natural gypsum in the north-western province of Vidin. Company officials announced that the new factory has a capacity of 80,000t/yr and has improved energy efficiency by 38% compared to the old factory.

Bulgarian construction company Montagengineering built the plant and the equipment was supplied by Germany's Claudius Peters Projects. The project was co-financed with Euro1.8m from the European Union funded operational program 'Competitiveness' while Gips provided the remainder from own funds.

Gips, Bulgaria's sole producer of natural gypsum, was set up in 1965. It intends to boost its exports, as it currently sells some 90% of its output on the domestic market according to its executive director Plamen Vassilev. The company currently exports to Serbia and is considering entering the Romanian market. The new factory and the company's nearby gypsum mine employ a total of 224 people.

China: Beijing New Building Materials has announced that its holding subsidiary Taishan Gypsum will spend more than US$39.3m building two gypsum wallboard plants and one cement retarder project using industrial by-product gypsum.

Taishan Gypsum will build one of its wallboard plants in the Shanghang Jiaoyang industrial park in Longyan City, Fujian Province. The project is estimated to cost roughly US$18.6m, of which US$5.6m will be raised by the company itself and US$13m from a bank loan.

China/Singapore: Sincap Group, a gypsum mining company in China's Shandong Province, has launched an initial public offering for a listing on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. The company is offering 32.5 million shares, comprising 25.5 million new shares and seven million vendor shares, at US$0.16 apiece.

Sincap hopes to raise US$4.1m, which will be earmarked for use in diversification of its products and for general working capital. Specifically, the group plans to construct and commission a K-gypsum powder plant. K-gypsum powder, which can only be processed from crystalline gypsum, is commonly used in the manufacture of moulds for precision casting as well as plaster casts for medical uses. The company also possesses mining and exploration rights to some of the largest gypsum reserves in the Dawenkou Basin in Shandong Province.

"Our decision to list is timely considering our current stage of development. With the funds raised we will be able to realise the untapped potential in our gypsum business, particularly with regard to a new product, K-gypsum powder, that we intend to develop," said Sincap's chairman and CEO Fu Hao.

China: Beijing New Building Materials has announced plans to build three gypsum board lines in Tianjin, Quanzhou of Fujian province and Liaocheng of Shandong province with a total investment of over US$62.9m.

The Tianjin project is a 50Mm2 plasterboard production line. Products from the project will be sold to Tianjin, Beijing, Tangshan, Qinhuangdao, Cangzhou, Dalian and overseas markets. The company plans to set up a wholly owned subsidiary with a planned registered capital of US$7.9m in Tianjin to run the project, which will also include a steel plant. The Quanzhou project will be a 30Mm2 plasterboard production line using FGD gypsum. Products will be sold to Fujian, eastern Guangdong and Taiwan.

Indonesia: Indonesia's largest producer of gypsum PT Petrojaya Boral Plasterboard (Jayaboard) is building a new gypsum board factory in Cilegon, Banten with a production capacity of 30MM²/yr. The project is estimated to cost US$25m and it will expand the capacity of the company to 65MM²/yr.

Construction of the project is already underway and it is to be completed in 2013 said Kil-Joo Lee, the president of the Boral subsidiary.

Canada: Cabot Gypsum has relaunched gypsum production at a previously closed facility in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The company has taken over the plant previously owned by Federal Gypsum, which shut down and went bankrupt in 2008.

Sales manager Reg MacLeod said that Cabot Gypsum acquired the plant's assets earlier in 2011 and is leasing the facility from the government of Nova Scotia. MacLeod says the firm expects significant job growth in about a year after the company becomes better established. He wouldn't say how many workers are currently employed at the plant. The factory is currently providing its product throughout the region, with materials being delivered primarily to building supply dealers.

According to the Global Gypsum Directory 2008-2009, the former Federal Gypsum plant on the same site had a capacity of 25.55MM²/ yr before it closed in 2008.

Uzbekistan: Germany's Knauf International GmbH has opened its gypsum wallboard plant in Kagan, Uzbekistan. The project, which is run by Knauf Gips Bukhara, was built at a cost of around USD51.1m. Construction started in 2008 and was completed in June 2011. To date, the company has been operating the 20MM2/yr plant in test mode. The project is the second by Knauf in Uzbekistan.

India: Preparations are reported to be 'in full swing' towards the commissioning of a new fibre-glass-reinforced gypsum wallboard and building materials plant at Kochi by Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore and Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers, Mumbai.

Engineers from Rapid Building Systems, Australia, the technology provider for the project, have been in Kochi over the past month putting the finishing touches to the plant before commercial production begins later in 2011. A test run to produce the large building boards has been successful and further tests are being carried out at present.