Gypsum industry news

UK: Mid UK Recycling Limited plans to extend its Wilsford Heath waste management facility at Ancaster, South Kesteven in Lincolnshire. If its plans are approved, the plant would recycle up to 350,000t/yr of waste mattresses and plastics.

Chris Mountain, managing director, said that the investment could run into 'multiple millions' of Euros. "We are an existing business, we employ 350 people in Sleaford, Caythorpe and the Ancaster site," said Mountain. "We will put in the main planning proposal in the next three months and as soon as we get the green light we'll start straight away." He said that initially the company wants to start by the end of December 2015, although it may take three years to complete the expansion. "We have been four years developing the site next-door, which is full to capacity now," he said. "The range of products we produce is getting wider and wider. It makes no sense to export those jobs out of the county."

There would be a building for machinery that could break down mattresses into resalable parts. Leftovers would form solid recovered fuel (SRF) products, which could by cement plants and power stations. Another building would be created for packing and storing gypsum from recycled wallboard, which would be sold to supermarkets as cat litter. The business would also bring in a new way of recycling rigid plastics, breaking them down into granules to sell to Lincolnshire manufacturers of drainage pipes, water pipes and car parts.

UK: Saint-Gobain's British Gypsum is making it easier for specifiers and architects to identify environmental performance with the launch of seven new Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) that cover nine products.

As part of its aim to give environmental transparency and make it easier for specifiers to gather evidence for building certification schemes, such as BREEAM, LEED and SKA, British Gypsum has introduced additional EPD to its Thistle plaster range. These include declarations for Thistle BoardFinish, MultiFinish, BondingCoat, Browning, Universal OneCoat, DuraFinish, SprayFinish, ToughCoat and HardWall.

The EPDs were externally verified for the Thistle plaster products following a robust Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which calculated the environmental impact of each product throughout its lifecycle. The LCA considers a range of factors, including the effect of raw materials, manufacturing process, installation, performance in use and recycling capabilities.

"As our EPDs are based on clearly-defined EU-wide rules and regulations, our customers can be confident in the knowledge that they are receiving reliable indicators, allowing them to make an informed decision when planning or delivering a project," said Heidi Barnard, sustainability leader at British Gypsum. "We're currently the only UK plaster manufacturer to offer EPDs, but we recognise the importance of giving our customers greater transparency, especially in our industry, where sustainable practices are becoming more rigorous on an almost daily basis."

UK: A waste company has been ordered to pay Euro18,968 in fines and costs for illegally handling, storing and depositing wallboard. The case was brought by the Environment Agency.

In October 2012 approximately 60t of broken wallboard from Tawmix Timber Products Ltd was found tipped on a site known as Poppy's Field beside an old airfield at Winkleigh, Devon. The material was contaminated with construction and demolition waste. A special permit is needed to treat and store this type of waste. In July 2013 similar wallboard was illegally used to construct a new fence at Tawmix Timber Products' business premises at Unit 2, Winkleigh Airfield.

North Devon Magistrates' Court heard that Tawmix Timber Products was permitted to store, sort, separate, screen or crush waste wood at its site in Winkleigh. However, it did not have permission to accept gypsum based construction material such as wallboard, which requires specialist handling, treatment and disposal. The company had received advice and guidance from the Environment Agency on plasterboard and was aware it needed a 'variation' to its permit before it could accept this material.

"Wallboard should only be recycled and recovered by specialist companies," said Environment Agency spokesman Sue Smillie. "Tawmix Timber Products did not hold the necessary permits to store, shred and deposit this material. By accepting wallboard on Poppy's Field and depositing wallboard at its main site, the company was in breach of its permit."

Tawmix Timber Products Ltd was fined a total of Euro15,167 and ordered to pay Euro3713 costs for two offences under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2010, including the illegal storage and use of chipped wallboard at Poppy's Field and Unit 2, Winkleigh. The company pleaded guilty to both charges at an earlier hearing.

UK: Cuddy Recycling Ltd, a start up company that is supported by the Welsh Government, plans to invest Euro1.49m to create the first wood, wallboard and gypsum recycling centre in South Wales. It will create 22 jobs.

Backed by Euro285,000 from the Welsh Economic Growth Fund, the purpose-built centre will be based on the former Wern Works site in Briton Ferry, Neath Port Talbot which, subject to planning, will be partially demolished and redeveloped. The new centre will process and recycle demolition aggregate from construction and demolition projects across Wales, as well as waste timber and wallboard from the construction industry and civil amenity sites.

It aims to provide a green alternative to landfill with waste timber used for animal bedding, panel board manufacture and biomass fuel, with the option of introducing a garden mulch product at a later date.

Aggregates will be sorted for reuse in construction companies. Wallboard will, where possible, be taken back to wallboard manufacture, or the gypsum recycled as a soil conditioner for agricultural purposes. There is also potential for use as a cement additive.

"This project supports two of our key economic sectors, providing a specific service for the construction sector while the new business will operate in the energy and environment industry, one of the fastest growing sectors in the Welsh economy with waste management - the largest sub sector," said economy minister Edwina Hart. "Companies working in this area are not only making a significant contribution in terms of job creation and financial impact, but by reducing waste to landfill they are helping us achieve recycling targets and ensure that we create a sustainable environment for future generations. The proposed new centre will provide an important facility to deal with construction and demolition waste and I am pleased to support this new start up through the Economic Growth Fund."

UK/Belgium: Siniat has boosted its sales of its premium thermal wallboard by 56% year-on-year with a marketing campaign. Taxi Studio, a creative firm in Bristol, UK, devised a campaign to extol the benefits of using the premium thermal wallboard to persuade merchants, builders and homeowners to trade up from using a standard thermal wallboard to Siniat's premium offering.

Siniat's marketing and communications manager Fiona O' Callaghan said that the decision to bring in people with more expertise has paid off: "We had no experience of executing a national marketing campaign and the benefits of the thermal plasterboard are complex ones to communicate," she said. "What's more, having recently rebranded there was very little knowledge of the Siniat brand. Taxi Studio managed to devise a campaign that dealt with all aspects as well as creating a real internal buzz around the company. We're absolutely delighted with the results and the creativity of the campaign has really opened our eyes."

UK: Allied Custom Gypsum (ACG), a worldwide provider of gypsum products, has announced that it is now certified by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), a leading global safety and quality certification program, as compliant to Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).

Used by more than 20,000 certified suppliers in 90 countries, the BRC is the world's largest provider of safety and quality standards programmes for food manufacturing, packaging, storage, distribution and consumer products. The BRC aids in standardising quality, safety, operational criteria and manufacturers' fulfilment of legal obligations.

"We are extremely pleased to make the announcement of our certification and become the first and only certified calcium sulphate supplier," said Jim Hill, vice president of marketing. "At ACG, we understand the responsibility inherent in processing and packaging food and pharmaceutical grade calcium sulphate. That's why we have dedicated one of our two grinding facilities to the production of food and pharmaceutical grade calcium sulphate," said Hill. "Our commitment to high-quality standards is unprecedented."

UK: Energy savings of 63% have been achieved following the installation of multiple Saint-Gobain systems in a world-first retrofit research project.

Saint-Gobain worked with the Energy House at Salford University, Greater Manchester, UK to prove that whole-house, fabric first retrofitting of homes can deliver significantly reduced energy costs, lower CO₂ emissions and remove 50% of air leakage.

The Energy House at Salford University is a typical 1919 terraced house that has been reconstructed in a fully environmentally controllable chamber, in which climatic conditions can be maintained, varied, repeated and patterns monitored. The type of building used in the study represents 21% of UK housing stock and is classed as a hard-to-treat property due to its poor energy efficiency derived from solid wall construction.

The Energy House at Salford University included Saint-Gobain systems from British Gypsum, Glassolutions, Isover and Weber to bring high levels of thermal efficiency. The approach of the project was to measure the whole-house performance post-installation using off-the-shelf Saint-Gobain systems and standard installation techniques, making the results repeatable across the UK's hard-to-treat housing stock.

UK: The new Quality Protocol (QP) for recycled gypsum will put an end to its use in agriculture as well as impacting negatively on the plasterboard recycling industry, according to the Gypsum Re-processors' Association UK and Ireland (GRAUKI).

GRAUKI also believes that there will be a short-term increase in the illegal disposal of waste plasterboard due to the removal of agricultural soil treatment as an approved end-use for recycled gypsum in the QP.

The QP for the production and use of recycled gypsum from waste plasterboard was published by the Environment Agency and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in consultation with UK governments and other regulatory stakeholders. It was published in March 2014 and is applicable throughout the UK. The QP designates just two permitted end uses for the of recycled gypsum, which are wallboard manufacture and cement production. As a result, recycled gypsum can now only be spread to land as a waste, for which gypsum re-processors will need to apply for a permit.

According to GRAUKI, "In practice the cost and legislative constraints are such that GRAUKI members feel that this will put an end to the beneficial use of recycled gypsum in agriculture." The Association added, "This change will have a negative impact on the overall capacity of the plasterboard recycling industry in the UK, which is already struggling to cope with the amount of gypsum waste generated."

GRAUKI previously raised concerns in 2013 that the EA could 'strangle' the plasterboard recycling industry unless it permitted more end uses for recycled gypsum.

UK: Saint-Gobain has opened a technical academy in the town of Flitwick, Bedfordshire, UK, to help bridge the skills gap in technical training.

The Saint-Gobain Technical Academy will run a range of training and specialist up-skilling courses. The multi-purpose centre has been developed to feature innovation and product demonstration areas, practical workshops, lecture rooms and meeting facilities.

The courses from Saint-Gobain's companies, including Weber, British Gypsum, Isover, PAM and Pasquill, are designed for 10 to 15 candidates and cover topics such as external wall insulation (EWI), internal wall insulation (IWI), renders and tiling to concrete repair, construction mortars, roofing, pipework and flooring.

Pádraig Barry, managing director for Weber, said, "The facility offers training on a wide range of products and systems from a number of Saint-Gobain brands. The decision to invest in the Flitwick site creates a more accessible location for installers and trade professionals operating in central and southern regions." He continued, "The construction market is believed to need approximately 180,000 more workers to deliver the planned housing and infrastructure projects by 2018. Part of the Saint-Gobain Technical Academy's role is to facilitate this need, but crucially it will also ensure that new and current trade professionals are of the highest calibre, trained on innovative and sustainable systems and have the opportunity to up-skill."

UK: Siniat has invested more than Euro300,000 in the construction of a new laboratory facility at its manufacturing plant in Portbury, Somerset.

The lab provides a high-specification environment for Siniat's production, maintenance and quality assurance teams and has enabled it to consolidate all three functions, which were previously based in different parts of the site, in one central, integrated location at the heart of the plant. Construction work began in May 2013 and is now complete, with the lab fully operational.

The facility will also act as an area where Siniat can welcome customers and other visitors to discuss its latest innovations and demonstrate key product performance capabilities such as fire and water resistance.

The project is just one step in a long-term vision for improving the site, says Stephane Mettavant, Plant Manager. "We've embarked on an ambitious programme of change for our Bristol plant since becoming Siniat (in October 2012). It's focused on improving facilities for our customers and our employees and creating an environment in which we can share our expertise."

"The programme has already delivered tangible results and helped us to streamline our processes throughout the plant," said Mettavant. "We have been successful in reducing the number of customer complaints we receive to industry-leading levels and the new lab represents the next stage of reinforcing that quality assurance.

Siniat was formerly known as Lafarge Plasterboard. It was acquired from Lafarge by Belgium's Etex group at the end of 2011 and began trading as Siniat in October 2012.