Gypsum industry news

US: CertainTeed has completed an upgrade to the grinding control technology at its gypsum wallboard plant at Buchanan in New York state. The new variable frequency drive at the site can vary the speed at which raw gypsum is ground and save energy accordingly. It is expected to reduce the plant’s energy consumption by nearly 700,000kWh/yr. Other recent sustainable upgrades at the plant include the installation of 2.4MW solar array on its roof in 2018.

Parent company Saint-Gobain North America has announced a number of sustainability-focused upgrade projects at its wallboard plants so far in 2022. These include switching to renewable energy at its Montreal plant in Quebec, using recycled materials at its Nashville plant in Arkansas and installing a waste heat recovery system at its Vancouver plant in British Colombia.

UK: Saint-Gobain has brought its British Gypsum, Celotex and Isover gypsum wallboard and insulation brands together under the Saint-Gobain Interior Solutions portfolio. The marketing labelling is intended to allow customers to access products, solutions and services.

Dean O’Sullivan, the managing director of Saint-Gobain Interior Solutions, said “This collective three-brand approach allows customers to access the know-how and expertise of each brand in one place, through our dedicated sector and sales teams. This will bring a range of benefits to our customers, allowing us to provide even better support, with even simpler access to our market-leading systems and products.” He added, ”Each brand continues to play an important part, but by having a single point of contact and sector specific teams, we are confident our customers will realise the strength in collaboration and solutions that ultimately help them meet their needs for outstanding performance, longevity and value.”

Members of Eurogypsum, the European Gypsum Association, gathered at the Les Atelier des Tanneurs in Brussels on 27 - 28 April 2022 to formally celebrate the 60th Anniversary of their association, despite a delay of 12 months due to Covid restrictions. Over two days, they participated in meetings and panel sessions reminiscent of pre-pandemic times. Attending the Open Congress session on 28 April 2022, Global Gypsum found the event to be very dynamic and surprisingly open.

The Open Congress began with welcomes from the moderator, Knauf Insulation’s Sian Hughes and outgoing Eurogypsum President Emmanuel Normant, of Saint-Gobain. He introduced the past 60 years as one of ‘enormous change’ for the sector, but this was not meant to be a retrospective. Turning to the next 60 years, Normant said that gypsum’s inherent benefits, including its low embodied CO₂ emissions, recyclability, high degree of safety and ease of use, would make it even more crucial to global development in the future than in the past.

A series of quick-fire presentations from the industry’s big hitters then highlighted a wide range of ways to increase the sustainability of our sector.

Saint-Gobain’s Klaus Birk introduced Gyproc's project to switch its Fredrikstad wallboard plant in Norway to use a 100% electric wallboard production process by 2023. This will use renewable energy, predominantly sourced from hydroelectric power, and lead to a 70% drop in CO₂ emissions. This approach could be applicable to any wallboard plant with access to sufficient renewable power.

Knauf's Jörg Demmich then spoke about a project to extract gypsum from the ‘waste’ from the lithium production process. Even the best lithium ores only contain 3 - 6% lithium by mass, leaving 94 - 97% currently unused. As electric mobility grows, by-product gypsum from the lithium sector could partly offset the expected fall in flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) gypsum supplies.

Iryna Yermakova introduced the Etex Group's approach to the wallboard plant of the future. One area she highlighted was the potential for prefabrication at the wallboard plant before panels reach the job site. This has the potential, on some projects, to save up to 10% of the wallboard cost, transport cost and CO₂ emissions of the board used. Surely a quick win for contractors.

Nikolai Halle from Cobuilder introduced the Define tool, freely-available to the construction sector. Define will act like the Swift payment system, but for sustainability data instead of financial data. This would unify different sustainability metrics to cut through the confusing terms used by producers and reveal the 'real' performance of different products, rather than how effectively their attributes are marketed.

The keynote presentation, from the former European Commissioner for the Environment Janez Potočnik – ‘The Father of the Circular Economy’ - then highlighted why innovation is key, not only to the future of the gypsum sector, but to the planet itself. At current rates, the mass of man-made material will be three times larger than all biomass by 2040.

To avoid this, Potočnik argued that the entire economy needs to become service-based, rather than product-based. Under such a model, wallboard producers would become part of the ‘building envelope services sector’ rather than selling wallboard. The desire is then to sell wallboard with a long service life, that can be repurposed and recycled, rather than selling ever-increasing volumes of board.Taking this approach across the entire economy would help society to maximise gross domestic product while reducing environmental impacts, eventually decoupling them from each other entirely. Potočnik concluded that nature is already the 'perfect' circular economy. Humans just need to reintegrate into it.

To say that the panel discussion that followed was ‘lively’ would be an understatement. Member of the European Parliament Iskra Mihaylova, speaking the day after Russia halted gas supplies to her native Bulgaria, said that talk of energy independence and solidarity was 'not enough' and that Europe needed to act on the European Union Green Deal, particularly with a view to energy and resource efficiency and security.

Josefina Lindblom, the European Commission’s Policy Officer for Sustainable Buildings for Circular Economy, introduced what she hoped would become the next buzzword: ‘sufficiency’ - properly taking pause to consider what is truly required of new buildings. This includes the need to apply full circularity to renovation projects.

Adrian Joyce, from the European Alliance of Companies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings, asked the audience to think not in terms of 'energy efficiency,' but 'conservation of energy.' The two terms are subtly different, with the latter akin to ‘sufficiency.' Both point to the need to reduce the use of resources, not just the effectiveness which we use increasing amounts of resources.

Tristan Suffys, Secretary General of Eurogypsum, said that gypsum is well suited to fit into the low-CO₂, low-resource-use sector of the future. He called for re-use of derelict buildings, re-purposing and optimising the use of space by building above existing buildings.

The Open Congress drew to a close with a speech by the incoming President of Eurogypsum (and Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Etex) Jörg Ertle. He told Eurogypsum members that the 'doors' marked 'Green Deal,' 'Decarbonisation,' and 'Recycling' were all 'open' and that they should be making the most of the opportunities behind each. From Global Gypsum’s perspective, it seems that they have burst through each of the doors into the rooms behind. Some are even measuring up for wallboard.

In conclusion, it appears that the European wallboard sector is at the start of a major increase in sustainability efforts. This will be backed by politicians who are keen to decouple their economies from Russia’s and a public that is increasingly asking for change. And, with three major global producers - Knauf, Saint-Gobain and Etex - based in Europe, between them sharing 47% of the world’s wallboard capacity, we can expect to see these innovations spread to other regions rapidly.

Here’s to the next 60 years!

Canada: Saint-Gobain plans to carry out a US$70.9m upgrade and 40% capacity expansion of its 30Mm²/yr Montreal gypsum wallboard plant in Quebec. The project includes the replacement of natural gas with renewable electricity and a 30% reduction in energy consumption through efficiency improvements. As a result, it will turn the facility into North America’s first zero-carbon gypsum wallboard plant. Work will commence in mid-2023, with the commissioning of the upgraded plant following in late 2024.

Saint-Gobain’s vice president environmental, social, governance (ESG) North America and managing director, circular economy solutions Dennis Wilson said "Today we begin a historic new chapter at our Montreal gypsum plant, leading our industry towards a more sustainable future while increasing our production capacity at a time of unprecedented customer demand," said. "We thank our partners in the Quebec Government, the City of Saint-Catherine and Hydro-Québec for their support, and we thank our team for pushing the limits of technology and imagination to bring this bold project to life. The electrification of our Montreal plant is a massive step forward in our broader goal to decarbonise construction materials and a significant step towards our global goal of carbon neutrality by 2050."

US: CertainTeed has completed a US$1.3m upgrade to its Nashville wallboard plant in Arkansas to use recycled waste gypsum and paper. The plant will reuse 65,000t/yr of waste materials generated from the production process. The company plans to increase the amount of recycled materials in its gypsum wallboard in the future.

“In Nashville and at our manufacturing sites around the world, we remain laser-focused on reducing waste, reducing our consumption of natural resources, and increasing recycling and circularity throughout our value chain,” said Jay Bachmann, Vice President and General Manager of CertainTeed Gypsum.

UK: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is considering whether the proposed acquisition by Saint-Gobain of GCP Applied Technologies could result in the creation of a relevant merger situation or lessen market competition generally. It has asked any interested party to comment on the transaction by mid-June 2022.

Saint-Gobain said it had agreed to buy construction chemicals producer GCP Applied Technologies for Euro2bn in late 2021 with a conclusion date to the transaction by the end of 2022.

Canada/US: Saint-Gobain has acquired exterior building materials company Kaycan for US$928m. After the closing of the transaction in 2022, Kaycan’s US distribution arm will undergo divestiture to a third party. Kaycan currently employs 1300 people at 12 sites in Canada and the US. Saint-Gobain noted that the acquisition will complement its leadership in Canada, expanding its light and sustainable construction solutions offering in that market.

Portugal: Saint-Gobain has acquired Fibroplac, which operates the 10Mm²/yr Pombal gypsum wallboard plant in Central Portugal. Saint-Gobain already operates 10 plants, in addition to a research and development centre, in Portugal. Additionally, the France-based group acquired steel structures producer Falper.

The group said that the acquisitions align with its Grow & Impact strategy, which it says is being successfully implemented in Portugal."

France: Saint-Gobain says that it is confident it can offset inflation in raw material and energy costs in 2022 through price rises and hedging its energy costs. In an update on its first quarter results the group said that it expects its energy and raw material costs to increase by around Euro2.5bn in 2022 as a whole compared to 2021. Much of this inflation is related to the European market where the company says it has hedged around 80% of its natural gas and electricity purchases for 2022. It noted that it increased its prices and sales volumes by 14.5% and 1.9% year-on-year respectively in the first quarter of 2022.

The company added it had prepared contingency plans in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic should there be any disruptions to natural gas supplies from Russia. These include the classification of priority industries, using alternative energy sources already prepared at certain sites, and increasing the flexibility of its production capacities.

Saint-Gobain’s sales rose by 16% year-on-year to Euro10.4bn in the first quarter of 2022 from Euro12bn in the same period in 2021. The group said growth was driven by building renovation in Europe and by construction in the Americas and in Asia.

Turkey: France-based Saint-Gobain and building materials producer Dalsan have signed a joint-venture agreement, pursuant to which they will merge their gypsum wallboard operations in Turkey. The merge will give the new joint venture a gypsum wallboard production capacity of over 100Mm²/yr. It will also see the companies’ plaster production consolidated under their new subsidiary.

The partners said “This partnership will offer Turkish customers access to the most innovative and complete portfolio of light and sustainable solutions for the construction and renovation of the building envelope, as well as internal partitioning.”