Pabco's Las Vegas plant enjoys a number of advantages due to its history and location - it might just be the luckiest place to be in Las Vegas.
Away from the glitziest part of the Las Vegas Strip, along the freeway, through the suburbs, over the low mountain pass, through the canyons and out into the low hills and the scrubland, twelve miles north east of the neon signs and spectacular show-girls, you will find a compact and fortunate wallboard factory: Pabco Gypsum Las Vegas.
A decrease in overall demand for gypsum wallboard and strong competition among producers over raw materials is pushing the plasterboard industry towards rapid innovation. This innovation is focused in two directions: the first is product innovation, with the appearance of new products like the ultra-lightweight boards, the requirements posed on dimensional stability and creep resistance and the growing concerns about sustainability and environmental compatibility of the manufacturing process and the final product. The other direction is rigid optimisation of the manufacturing process, with a streamlining of operations, a reduction of energy consumption and a better use of raw materials.
The British Gypsum Robertsbridge wallboard plant, part of the French building materials giant Saint-Gobain since 2005, is located near the village of Robertsbridge in rural East Sussex. One of the largest employers in the local area, the site has been used for gypsum production for over 100 years, first as a plaster of Paris plant and then as a wallboard site since 1973. Today the site is one of the most flexible wallboard plants in the world, capable of producing 761 different types of board. It has recently undergone remarkable process improvements and is one of the safest in Saint-Gobain.
The British Gypsum Brightling mine, near the Robertsbridge wallboard plant in East Sussex, has been in operation since the early 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s it supplied up to 0.8Mt/yr of gypsum to the Robertsbridge wallboard plant, first via an aerial ropeway system and then a 4.7km-long conveyor, which was installed in 1989.
The 29th Eurogypsum Congress of Eurogypsum, the European Gypsum Association, took place at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Kraków, Poland on 10 – 11 May 2012. The event, held under the title, 'Gypsum is at the core of a sustainable and resource-efficient built environment,' was attended by around 85 delegates from Europe and further afield. The Congress heard a variety of presentations from the European Commission, architects, academics and other businesses in the gypsum industry and related areas.
