Gypsum industry news

France: Building Material Group (BMG) plans to build a 30Mm²/yr gypsum wallboard plant in Marseille. It has signed a lease with the port of Marseille Fos for a six-hectare plot of land at Caban, Fos-sur-Mer. The project has a budget to Euro60m and construction will start in 2020. Commissioning is scheduled for late 2022.

Switzerland: Sika recorded a net profit of Euro257m in the first half of 2020, down by 17% year-on-year from Euro308m in the first half of 2019. Net sales were Euro3.37bn, down by 3.2% from Euro3.48bn. Sika attributed the sales decline to negative currency effects. Decreased sales volumes in March 2020 through to May 2020 as a result of the coronavirus outbreak hampered profitability, according to the company. It said that the end of lockdowns in markets across the globe brought a return to organic growth in June 2020.

Canada: CertainTeed Canada plans to close its McAdam gypsum wallboard plant in New Brunswick by the end of February 2021. It said that the decision was made after ‘an extensive review of our business,’ according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). 50 employees are expected to lose their jobs, although the subsidiary of France-based Saint-Gobain says it will try to find roles at other CertainTeed and Saint-Gobain plants for them.
Production will stop at the unit at the end of August 2020. The plant will then continue using inventory until February 2021 with a skeleton staff. The plant was reported to be operating at 22 – 25% production capacity. The closure has been blamed on a decline for wallboard products in the Atlantic Canada region and elsewhere.

Canada: Red Moon Resources says it has restarted production for the season at its Ace mine in western Newfoundland. Overall production at the site in 2020 is expected to be less than in 2019 due to disruption to both operations and markets caused by coronavirus. The situation is expected to stabalise in 2021. The company mined 0.16Mt of gypsum and anhydrite from the site in 2019.

UK: Matt Pullen, the managing director of British Gypsum, says that the company intends to loosen restrictions on wallboard sales in August 2020. “Whilst we continue to see high levels of demand, we have sufficient capacity to supply your wallboard requirements without formal supply restrictions,” said Pullen. He added that the company’s plaster manufacturing plants continue to, ‘operate consistently at maximum capability.’

Gypsum plaster-based products have been in short supply in the UK since the local coronavirus-related lockdown started in March 2020. The subsidiary of Saint-Gobain suspended operations in April 2020 and Knauf stopped production at its wallboard plants in the UK at the end of March 2020. British Gypsum reported in late May 2020 that its wallboard capacity was at ‘approximately’ 80% of pre-coronavirus pandemic levels following the scaling up of its ‘Covid-19 safe’ operations and distribution plan. Etex’s Siniat said it was ending product allocation controls in early July 2020.