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Catch up on NGC information through press releases and announcements. |
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National Gypsum Breaks Ground for Mt. Holly Plant
National Gypsum Company, a leading manufacturer of gypsum wallboard, will break
ground tomorrow at 10 a.m. for its $125 million high-speed wallboard plant in Mt.
Holly, NC. The plant will create 100 direct jobs and 100 indirect for Gaston County
while recycling tons of waste material which would otherwise go to landfills.
It will be capable of producing approximately one billion square feet of wallboard
annually at speeds over 500 feet per minute. That is enough wallboard to complete
approximately 100,000 average-sized homes per year. National Gypsum expects to begin
operating the plant during the third quarter of 2007.
“We needed a 100-acre-plus site for our new plant with easy access to the Interstate
highway system, natural gas, and rail,” said Thomas C. Nelson, chairman, president
and CEO. “We also needed a high-quality workforce. Mt. Holly provides all of this.
It is an excellent site for our plant and we believe our clean manufacturing process
will fit nicely into the community.
“This major investment fills an important gap in supplying wallboard to the southeast
markets,” Nelson continued. “With the new plant in place, we will be better able
to serve key markets such as Charlotte and Atlanta, while improving supply in Florida
and the Mid-Atlantic from our plants located in those regions.”
Gypsum wallboard is typically produced from gypsum rock. In partnership with Duke
Power, the new plant will use byproduct gypsum produced at Duke’s coal-fired power
plants. As Duke Power scrubs sulfur dioxide from its coal-fired emissions, the byproduct
of the process is calcium sulfate, which is the chemical name for gypsum. National
Gypsum will receive byproduct gypsum that will be produced at the four Duke Power
plants involved, the Marshall, Cliffside, Allen, and Belews Creek stations.
“We are very pleased to have Duke Power as our partner in this project,” Nelson
said. “Duke is one of the most respected names in the industry, and it is recognized
as a leader in power generation, environmental stewardship, and community involvement.”
National Gypsum has a successful track record using byproduct gypsum and now operates
byproduct plants near Pittsburgh, Pa., and Tampa, Fla. Its Pittsburgh plant won
the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence in 2002. Last year,
its byproduct plant near Tampa was named one of the 10 Best Plants in the U.S. by
IndustryWeek Magazine.
Headquartered in Charlotte, National Gypsum is a leading supplier of wallboard,
interior finishing products, and cement board to the construction industry. It has
a network of 20 wallboard plants in North America, in addition to finishing products
and cement board plants, paper mills, and gypsum mines and quarries.
March 27, 2006
Contact:
Nancy Spurlock
704/365-7556
nhspurlock@nationalgypsum.com
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