Gypsum industry news

US: Gold Bond Building Products plans to spend US$90m on an upgrade to its Mount Holly gypsum wallboard plant in North Carolina. The project will include installing a railway line and related infrastructure to aid logistics, according to the Gaston Gazette newspaper. It is expected to create 11 new jobs at the site. Construction on the project is expected to be completed in 2024. The affiliate company of National Gypsum has operated a plant at Mount Holly since 2007.

Norway: Saint-Gobain has started producing net zero CO₂ gypsum wallboard at its Fredrikstad plant. This was made possible by switching the power supply for the unit to hydroelectric power from natural gas previously. It worked with state-owned sustainable energy agency Enova on the Euro25m upgrade project. Following the completion of work at the site it will now avoid emitting 23,000t/yr of CO₂. Improved heat recovery and process efficiency will reduce energy consumption by 30%. Plus, the company says that the plant’s production capacity has been increased by 40%.

The group says that this is the world's first carbon-neutral wallboard plant and it will enable it to launch a range of products with the lowest carbon footprint on the market in 2023. It added that the this initiative was a clear indication of the company’s commitment to reduce its scope one and two CO₂ emissions by 33% by 2030 compared to 2017, with a commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050

US: Georgia-Pacific’s Sweetwater West gypsum wallboard plant in Texas has completed an upgrade to its board-drying equipment. It has installed an Energy Optimization System (EOS), also known as a waste heat recovery unit, including new ducting, two new fans and a new exhaust stack, to an existing four-zone dryer. The newly upgraded system enables the collection of the waste exhaust from three zones of the plant and injects it into a fourth zone. This enables the burner in that zone to operate at a lower capacity. Around 2500t/yr of CO₂ is saved in the process.

David Neal, vice president of Gypsum Operations for Georgia-Pacific said, “Advancements in energy savings and resource consumption reduction are goals toward which Georgia-Pacific works every single day.”

Georgia-Pacific started building a second wallboard plant next to its Sweetwater West plant in late 2020. The new 65Mm²/yr unit was scheduled to start production in late 2022.

US: CertainTeed plans to spend US$1.1m towards installing recycling equipment at its Palatka gypsum wallboard plant in Florida. The upgrade will increasing the recycled content of its wallboard products manufactured at the unit by 18,000t/yr while also reducing the site’s CO₂ emissions by 2260t/yr.

The new recycling equipment at the Palatka plant will work by grinding the waste gypsum and waste paper down into fine particles, allowing the plant to capture and internally recycle the materials, which are sorted and then reintroduced to the production process at the plant. The kit will be powered by electricity and will replace older machines currently powered by diesel, lowering the plant’s Scope 1 Emissions from its operations. Additionally, by consuming more recycled gypsum, the plant will become less reliant on feedstock that is shipped to the site from external sources, allowing the unit to also reduce Scope 3 Emissions associated with transporting the feedstock.

Jay Bachmann, the Vice President and General Manager of CertainTeed Interior Products Group, said, “The new technology in Palatka will allow us to increase the recycled content in our products, reduce our carbon CO₂ at the plant, and strengthen our operations at a time of unprecedented consumer demand for gypsum wallboard in the south-eastern US.”

The investment at the Palatka plant follows similar investments that will increase the recycled content of wallboard made at CertainTeed’s wallboard plants in Silver Grove in Kentucky and Nashville in Arkansas. Parent company Saint-Gobain continues to roll out its global ‘Grow and Impact’ strategy, which includes reducing waste and increasing recycling efforts at its manufacturing sites.

New Zealand: Winstone Wallboards says that the allocation model it introduced in July 2022 and other measures it has taken are starting to ease a shortage in gypsum wallboard. The company’s general manger David Thomas said that by operating both of its wallboard plants continuously and an upgrade to its Auckland plant in July 2022 had increased its production capacity. It has also been able to resume importing wallboard from Australia. The company is currently despatching around 3.25Mm²/month of gypsum wallboard.

The company said that is going to reduce merchant lead time between order placement and delivery from October 2022 in order to improve the effectiveness of its allocation system. It hopes that doing this will provide more flexibility along the supply chain for end-users to secure product when it is needed for installation. It also asked tradespeople to continue communicating with merchants about requirements and timings in order for the wallboard producer to understand real demand levels.

Thomas said, “The team and I recognise the responsibility Winstone Wallboards has in supplying plasterboard to the New Zealand market and want to assure you we are committed to living up to that responsibility. That we have retained such a role is not just an outcome of what we do but, a result of the high level of support the market has provided us over decades.”

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.

Romania: Belgium-based Etex invested Euro1m on upgrades to the logistics capacities of its Turceni gypsum wallboard plant and its Aghiresu plaster plant. It also started work on a Euro6m sludge drying unit at coal-fired power plant in Oltenia that will supply synthetic gypsum for use at Turceni, according to See News. The company operates locally under the Siniat Romania brand. It reported a 20% year-on-year rise in turnover to Euro59.6m in 2021.

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.

US: Georgia-Pacific has opened a new gypsum quarry near Sweetwater in Texas. The 240 hectare site is located next to a new unit being built at the company’s Sweetwater gypsum wallboard plant, according to the Sweetwater Reporter newspaper. Once operational, the quarry will supply the plant with around 2000t/day of raw gypsum.

The gypsum wallboard producer is currently building a new 65Mm²/yr gypsum wallboard plant adjacent to its existing 30Mm²/yr Sweetwater gypsum wallboard plant. Production at the new site is expected to start in late 2022.