Gypsum industry news

France: Saint-Gobain’s sales dropped by 6.4% year-on-year to €48bn in 2023. Meanwhile, the group’s earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 1.7% year-on-year to €7bn. Despite this, it achieved average organic growth of 6.4% across its markets, buoyed by sustainable solutions, which accounted for 75% of its sales. Throughout the year, Saint-Gobain invested €223m in capital expenditure and research and development, in line with rising internal carbon prices. This contributed to a 34% reduction in its Scope 1 and 2 CO₂ emissions compared to 2017 levels. The company used 57% renewable electricity in 2023, compared to 52% in 2022, and concluded eight new renewable energy supply deals. It aims to reach 66% renewables by 2025.

Australia: France-based Saint-Gobain has submitted a non-binding indicative offer of US$5.44bn for building materials producer and land banking entity CSR. CSR’s businesses include insulation producer Bradford, fibre cement systems producer Cemintel, wallboard producer Gyprock, autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) block producer Hebel and roofing producer Monier. Together, CSR’s building materials units accounted for 72% of its sales in 2023.

UK: Saint-Gobain subsidiary British Gypsum has launched its BIMlocker software, a tool to enhance the use of its building information modelling (BIM) objects. The company says that BIMlocker improves customers’ data accuracy and accountability. The tool integrates with existing Revit software.

Head of digital construction Paul French said "Demonstrating compliance, accountability and integrity has never been more important within our industry. Our new BIMlocker software provides reassurance as an invisible layer of security that acts as a valuable aid to construction supply chains in the Building Safety Act era. It eliminates any ambiguity and ensures complete transparency."

Italy: Saint-Gobain has entered into a 10-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Switzerland-based utilities provider Axpo Holding. Under the agreement, Axpo Holding will supply 22GWh/yr of renewable electricity from a newly built wind farm in Puglia. The deal will fulfil 11% of Saint-Gobain's Italian energy needs across 10 sites.

The latest PPA with Axpo Italia is Saint-Gobain's fifth in Italy. Collectively, these will bring the group’s reliance on renewables in its Italian operations to 20%.

Canada: CertainTeed Canada has begun upgrading its Montréal gypsum wallboard plant to convert the plant to net zero Scope 1 and 2 CO₂ emissions. The producer says that the plant will become the first net-zero facility of its kind in North America.

UAE: The wallboard recycling unit at Saint-Gobain Gyproc’s Abu Dhabi gypsum wallboard plant has processed 22,000t of gypsum since 2014, the L'Usine Nouvelle newspaper has reported. The producer said that the Abu Dhabi plant can incorporate 10 – 12% recycled materials in its gypsum wallboard production. It runs on a diversified energy supply, which in its most recent recorded month included 55% nuclear, 38% natural gas and 7% solar energy.

In 2023, Saint-Gobain reduced its non-recycled waste by 78% year-on-year and its water footprint by 14% from 2017 levels in the UAE.

Securing sustainable energy sources has been the priority for some of Spain’s gypsum wallboard producers in recent weeks.

In late November 2023 Pladur revealed that it plans to use green hydrogen at its production plants from the second half of 2024 onwards. It will start at its Valdemoro plant near Madrid before rolling usage out elsewhere afterwards. The subsidiary of Belgium-based Etex is also considering trials with biomethane and biogas. Then a few weeks later in early December 2023 Knauf Ibérica announced that it is planning to build a 7.5MW biomass unit at its Guixers plant in Lleida. Commissioning is currently scheduled for late 2024. This follows the installation of solar panels at the site earlier in 2023. Along similar lines, Saint-Gobain Placo signed an 11-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with electricity company Endesa at the end of 2022 to supply 150GWh/yr of renewable energy. Together with a previous renewable energy deal this was expected to cover up to 65% of the group’s electricity requirements in Spain.

Wallboard plants all over the world have been embarking on sustainable energy drives in recent years but the particular drivers in Spain are worth mentioning. The country’s high electricity prices have frequently been raised by large-scale industrial users in the past, often in terms of competitiveness of exports. However, the situation worsened following the start of the war in Ukraine in early 2022 as the wholesale price of coal and gas jumped. The high price of gas in particular pushed the electricity prices up in Spain and wallboard plants typically use both sources of energy. The government eventually capped the price of gas and coal for power generation. It then offered an aid scheme for large-scale gas users but missed the gypsum sector out, much to the chagrin of the Asociación Técnica y Empresarial del Yeso (ATEDY), which complained about it at the end of 2022. The gypsum industry was later included in July 2023 when a funding scheme was announced. It’s unknown how much this initiative has helped wallboard manufacturers but the shift to renewables by the three main companies mentioned above tells its own story.

Despite the energy supply problems a new entrant to the wallboard market in Spain announced itself in March 2023. Italy-based Fassa Bortolo said it was going to spend Euro90m on building a wallboard plant at Tarancón in Cuenca. No commissioning date or main supplier name has been disclosed, but Italy-based Bedeschi did say in late November 2023 that it was providing raw bulk material handling equipment including an apron feeder, stacker, excavator and conveyor belt line. There has also been no word on how the new plant will power itself.

On the topic of exports, Spain has long been one of the world’s larger shippers of natural gypsum. Data from the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME) shows that the country exported 9.2Mt of gypsum in 2021 with a value of Euro60m. Whether this changed in 2022 when the energy prices increased is unknown at the time of writing. In 2021 Almería was the epicentre of the country, accounting for 70% of the 13Mt total volume of gypsum extracted that year with a quarry at Sorbas, operated by Saint-Gobain Placo, reportedly being the second largest in the world. Most of the gypsum extracted at Sorbas was then driven by truck to the Port of Garrucha, making it the busiest gypsum port in Europe by volume.

Eurogypsum, the European federation of national associations of producers of gypsum products, launched its industry roadmap to net-zero by 2050 on 9 November 2023 at the Global Gypsum Conference 2023, which took place in Chicago, US. Various actions and technologies were unveiled as part of the plan including some of the approaches being taken in Spain such as using ‘green’ electricity, biomass and green hydrogen. All of these suggestions were split into short, mid and final term feasibility categories. So, for example, using renewable sourced electricity is dependent on it being affordable and available. It was placed in the immediate category. Yet, using biofuels or green hydrogen is flagged as requiring investment, so deemed as short-to-mid term.

Spain presents a case where the cost of energy for industrial users may be aligning with sustainability goals. How this translates onto balance sheets remains to be seen though. These kinds of sustainable energy projects may only be slowing the inevitable as raw material and energy costs mount anyway leading to tighter margins, increased competition and potential consolidation. The gypsum sector in Spain may well be testing out slightly earlier than elsewhere how much a more sustainable world will actually cost.

India: Saint-Gobain Gyproc has launched a range of products including gypsum wallboards. The new product line includes 'Habito Standard' a gypsum wallboard made for heavy unplanned and planned loading applications, 'Rigiroc,' a multi-purpose moisture resistant board and 'Glasroc X,' a wallboard for exterior applications. Saint-Gobain Gyproc also released a ceiling tile product at the same time.

Najwa Khoury, Global Gypsum Strategy Director at parent company Saint-Gobain, said "Saint-Gobain Gyproc continues to be committed to meeting the demands of the changing preferences and environmental conditions in India. Over the last few years, we have seen a growing acceptance of drywall and modern ceiling tiles in India, and we want to stay ahead of the curve. We are delighted to introduce a new range of innovative products that are functionally superior, sustainable, affordable and customizable, redefining the future of construction.”

The products will be available in India and neighbouring countries including Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

France: Saint-Gobain’s chief executive officer (CEO) will also become the company’s chair after the next general shareholders meeting in June 2024. He will succeed Pierre-André de Chalendar in the role, who is preparing to retire. Independent director Jean-Francois Cirelli will also be appointed as vice-chair at the meeting.

The France-based company said that its board of directors have been working since 2021 to enhance the effectiveness of the group's governance and the independence of the board by restructuring the balance of power within it. A Lead Independent Director will also be appointed in June 2024 with additional powers and the proportion of independent directors on the board will be increased, subject to a vote.

France: Saint-Gobain says that its like-for-like sales were stable year-on-year during the first nine months of 2023. In real terms its sales were Euro36.5bn during the first nine months of 2023, down by 4.9% year-on-year from the corresponding period in 2022. The group partly attributed this to comparison effects from its previous divestment of assets, including its distribution division, and negative currency exchange effects. Across its businesses, Saint-Gobain’s volumes dropped by 5.9%. Geographically, a ‘resilient’ renovation market offset a slowdown in new construction projects to raise sales in Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa by 1% year-on-year, but failed to do so in Northern Europe, where sales dropped by 5%. Sales fell by 5.5% in Latin America, as Brazil experienced the impacts of macroeconomic difficulties, but rose by 5% in North America. Across the Asia-Pacific region, organic sales growth was 5.1%.

Saint-Gobain said “In a difficult macroeconomic environment, the group continued to outperform its markets thanks to the pertinence of its strategic positioning at the heart of energy and decarbonisation challenges and to the strength of its local organisation by country, which enables it to offer comprehensive solutions to its customers.” It added “The group continues to focus on developing sustainable and innovative solutions with a positive impact, supported by strong innovation and investments for growth.”