Gypsum industry news

Saudi Arabia: National Gypsum says it has renewed the environmental permit for its Riyadh wallboard plant for a period of three years. The renewal follows a study by the National Center for Environmental Compliance. The wallboard producer has also confirmed that its environmental permits have been renewed at its plants and quarries in Dammam and Yanbu.

Belgium: Etex’s 2020 Sustainability Report has recorded the company’s progress towards its sustainability goals under four headings. Under the heading ‘carbon neutrality,’ it produced and purchased 72% of its electricity consumption renewably, compared to 14% in 2019. Under ‘health, safety and wellbeing,’ its lost-time accidents per million working hours fell by 36% year-on-year to 1.4 from 2.2. Under ‘waste management and circularity,’ it reduced its waste generation by 8.9% to 254Mt from 278Mt and reduced the share of its waste sent to landfill to 18% from 26%. Lastly, under ‘diversity and inclusion,’ 28% of the company’s newly hired staff were women, compared to a group total share of 19%.

CEO Paul van Oyen said “At Etex, we have a clear commitment to helping build a better, sustainable future. We seek to offer holistic value to our customers, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders, as we continue to decouple our growth from environmental and social impacts. To help achieve this, we focus on lightweight materials and prefabricated construction. These methods offer advantages such as reduced raw material use, energy consumption, waste and emissions. Even more, they contribute to enhanced long-term circularity by creating opportunities for deconstruction, reuse and recycling.”

Spain: Saint-Gobain Placo has launched a new technical manual on environmental certifications of buildings. The Saint-Gobain subsidiary says that the manual will help professionals when addressing all certification requirements in Spanish construction. It takes a practical approach and details all processes and evidence necessary for each certificate. The company hopes to advance sustainable development by facilitating more comprehensive planning.

UK: Global not-for-profit organisation CDP has included Saint-Gobain on its Climate Change A-List 2019 for environmental transparency and performance aimed at facilitating a zero-net carbon economy. Only a handful of industrial producers achieved inclusion on the list, including US-based insulation producer OwensCorning and Germany’s HeidelbergCement and steel producer Thyssenkrupp. The company said that the listing commended its ‘ambitious commitment made in 2019 to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, in line with the +1.5°C warming scenarios.’

Thailand: USG Boral Thailand, also known as Siam Gypsum, has won the Green Industry Award at the Green Industry Forum Seminar. The award was presented by Suthon Nikomkate, Deputy Secretary-General of the Office of Industrial Product Standards, Ministry of Industry to Wuttichai Ponmanop, Factory Management Manager, Siam Gypsum. The gypsum wallboard manufacturer was awarded the accolade for its focus on its production process, environmental management and its social environmental responsibility.

Canada: The British Columbia government has granted an environmental assessment certificate for a 0.4Mt/yr opencast gypsum mine in West Kootenay proposed by CertainTeed Gypsum Canada. Construction of the project is expected to cost US$19m, according to the Canadian Press. Gypsum from the mine will be used to manufacture gypsum wallboard, cement and plaster products.

France: Environmental concerns have been raised about Placoplatre's plans to develop a open-cast gypsum quarry at Fort de Vaujours near Paris. The site is believed to contain enough high-end gypsum for the Saint-Gobain subsidiary's nearby wallboard plant and for other plants in the group, according to Deutsche Welle. However, environmentalists have raised the risks of excavating a site near to the capital of France that was used for nuclear testing between the 1950s and 1990s.

"It's important to maintain our plant. We employ 400 people at the factory which generates 3000 indirect jobs and an additional average 1000 workers will be operating at the industrial site," said Gilles Bouchet, Placoplatre's head of mining development. He added that the wallboard producer has conducted impact and radiation studies that have been submitted to the French nuclear safety body ASN.

Christophe Nedelec, president of environmental non-government organisation Gagny-Les Abbesses-Chelles has queried the efficacy of Placoplatre's tests and has called for an independent body to conduct them.