Gypsum industry news

US: GLC Minerals has increased its production of specialised gypsum formulas for various applications, after the Port of Baltimore closed on 26 March 2024. The port previously received the largest quantity of gypsum imports of any US port. It closed when the Singapore-registered container ship Dali collided with the nearby Francis Scott Key bridge in the Baltimore harbour. GLC Minerals says that it is collaborating with public and private entities, among them the Port of Green Bay in its home state of Wisconsin, to support supply chains reliant on gypsum.

GLC Minerals’ chief commercial officer, Ed Van Poucke, said “We’re ramping up gypsum production to help support specific segments of the supply chain until the Port of Baltimore is up and running. We operate a terminal at the Port of Green Bay, in the heart of the Midwest, which enables us to help fill this gap in demand, allowing industries that rely on gypsum to continue operating.”

GLC Minerals president Holly Bellmund said "We are nearly 1600km away from the Port of Baltimore, and we’re seeing the impact this event has had on the market. We’re just pleased to be able to assist and be a stop-gap for certain industries until their supply chain is restored.”

US: Southern Wall Products plans to invest US$23m in the construction of a new gypsum wallboard finishing products plant in Anderson, South Carolina. When commissioned in June 2025, the plant will employ 28 people.

President Chris Winkler said "Southern Wall Products has been constructing communities since 1981. We are thrilled about this next chapter for our company, our employees and their families.”

Canada: US-based GMS has agreed to acquire Yvon Building Supply and associated companies for US$144m. The deal includes Yvon Insulation, Yvon Insulation Windsor, Laminated Glass Technologies and Right Fit Foam Insulation. The transaction is expected to close in July 2024 and is subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.

GMS expects to fund the purchase with cash and its established revolving credit facility. Once completed, the Yvon companies are expected to continue to operate under their existing brand names and under the leadership of current president, Tom Scott. In addition, Yvon will partner with GMS Canada’s Watson and Blair brands in the local market.

John C Turner, Jr, the president and CEO of GMS said, “We look forward to this transaction expanding our product and service offerings, including further expanding our Complementary Products category, in the fast-growing Greater Toronto Area and throughout southern Ontario.”

US: Out West Drywall is among building materials producers that have donated their products to non-profit organisation Habitat for Humanity’s latest affordable housing development in Montrose, Colorado. Local press has reported that the producer donated its gypsum wallboard for use in the development. Habitat for Humanity uses the economic process of shared appreciation to give its homeowners 5% composite annual growth in the equity value of their new homes over 20 years. Its goal is to raise living standards by increasing access to housing.

North America: Market research company IMARC Group has quantified the North American gypsum wallboard market at 2.9Bnm² in 2023. In a report detailing the outlook for the nine years up to 2032, IMARC Group forecast a composite annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.6%, resulting in sales volumes of 3.6Bnm² in 2032.

US: National consumption of gypsum wallboard dropped by 4.3% year-on-year to 2.51Mm² in 2023, according to United States Geological Survey (USGS) data. Demand for natural gypsum was 45Mt, up by 3% from 43.7Mt in 2022. The market imported 8.1Mt of gypsum throughout the year, up by 18% year-on-year.

Domestic production of crude gypsum in the US dropped by 1.3% year-on-year in 2023, to 22Mt. Exports grew by 15% to 45,000t.

US: Eagle Materials recorded sales of US$1.78bn in the first nine months of the 2024 financial year. This corresponds to a rise of 6.2% year-on-year from the corresponding period of the 2023 financial year. The producer’s light materials sales fell by 4.6% to US$703m, and its gypsum wallboard sales volumes fell by 4% to 206Mm². The group raised its net earnings by 11% to US$401m.

US: Georgia-Pacific made total investments worth US$2bn throughout 2023. Major capital expenditure (CAPEX) investments include its US$325m construction of its second Sweetwater gypsum wallboard plant in Texas.

Georgia-Pacific Gypsum president David Neal said "Georgia-Pacific is keenly focused on the future and committed to innovation and meeting the needs of our customers. The two [Sweetwater gypsum wallboard plant] operations combined will supply customers and distribution partners with more than 93Mm²/yr of gypsum wallboard each year and create more than 100 new jobs. This investment strengthens Georgia-Pacific's capacity to meet growing customer needs in Texas' residential, commercial and industrial construction markets."

US: The US Geological Survey reported domestic natural gypsum production volumes of 16.3Mt during the first nine months of 2023, down by 0.3% year-on-year from 16.4Mt during the corresponding part of 2022. Meanwhile, calcined gypsum production volumes grew by 1.2%, to 14Mt from 13.8Mt. Throughout the period, the US imported 5.91Mt of crude gypsum, up by 35% year-on-year. Spain supplied 2.4Mt (41%) of imports, followed by Mexico with 1.7Mt (29 %) and Canada with 1.56Mt (26%).

Georgia-Pacific officially opened its new gypsum wallboard plant at Sweetwater in Texas earlier this month. The US$325m project is situated next to the company’s existing plant at the site, Sweetwater West, on the other side of a road. Canada-based Gyptech said in 2021 that it was supplying the equipment for the new high-speed line at the site.

When Georgia-Pacific first announced the new project in 2020, it mentioned that it would be able to keep its logistics costs low, use raw gypsum reserves and the existing workforce. Despite this, the plant has still created over 100 new jobs. The company also said that it anticipated closing its 60Mm²/yr Quanah plant, also in Texas, depending upon market conditions. This came to pass in March 2023. Altogether, both plants at Sweetwater will have a production capacity of around 93Mm²/yr. This implies that the new plant has a production capacity of around 60Mm²/yr, given that the existing plant’s capacity is 30Mm²/yr. Funnily enough this is the same as the Quanah plant.

The new plant at Sweetwater may be a sign that the US wallboard market is picking up again. Georgia-Pacific has invested some serious money and it is targeting Texas, a leading area for construction nationally. However, it does come with a few caveats. Firstly, the new plant at Sweetwater is replacing existing capacity at Quanah. Secondly, it is using some of the advantages of the existing plant such as its trucks and its proximity to its customers. This suggests that the company may be wary of building a new plant in a greenfield location with all the potential risks that might involve.

US wallboard sales have regularly peaked and troughed over the decades, like many other commodity markets, as demand and production capacity race each other. Sales of wallboard peaked around the year 2000 and then again in the mid 2000s before tailing off following the 2007 recession. They have been recovering ever since and started to get close to the levels seen in the first half of the 2000s in 2022 when the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported wallboard sales of 2.6Bnm².

Generally, the last tranche of new wallboard plants in the US were built or approved in the late 2000s before the financial downturn. These new sites included CertainTeed’s Roxboro plant in North Carolina and the Moundsville plant in West Virginia, Gold Bond Building Products’ Mount Holly plant in North Carolina and American Gypsum’s Georgetown plant in South Carolina. From this point though various plants were either closed or mothballed. Some of the latter have been restarted as the market slowly recovered. New plant projects in the 2010s tended to be upgrades or replacements. One example of this was USG’s plan to rebuild a production line at its Jacksonville plant in Florida, which was announced in late 2017 before Knauf took over the company in 2018. Another was National Gypsum’s scheme to reopen its Wilmington plant in North Carolina in 2019. At the same time in the 2010s there were a number of mergers and acquisitions including Lafarge’s sale of its gypsum business in North America in 2013, Knauf’s takeover of USG in 2019 and Saint-Gobain’s acquisition of Continental Building Products in 2020.

When Georgia-Pacific started building the new plant at Sweetwater in 2020 this marked the start of a new phase of US wallboard plant projects. American Gypsum announced plans for an upgrade to its Albuquerque gypsum wallboard plant in 2021, Gold Bond Building Products started building its long-delayed Eloy plant in Arizona in 2022 and it said it was spending US$90m on an upgrade to its Mount Holly gypsum wallboard plant in North Carolina in 2023, and CertainTeed revealed it wanted to build a second production line at its Palatka gypsum wallboard plant in Florida also in 2023.

Congratulations are due to Georgia-Pacific for the achievement at Sweetwater. Optimism for the US market in general may also be in order given the slow but steady stream of projects that have been announced and completed since 2020. The next step, when a company builds a new wallboard plant at a greenfield site in the US, looks set to happen when Gold Bond Building Products completes its Eloy plant.