The general director of Pladur, Enrique Ramírez, calls it “white gold”. It is about plaster, a well-known mineral in construction that has the largest mines in Europe in Spain and that has unleashed a real business battle, in which three companies dominate the plasterboard market, condemned to concentrate.
Spain is the largest gypsum quarry in Europe and the fourth in the world. The United States is the world leader, with 23 million tons a year, ahead of Iran and China, according to Statista. Next is Spain, with 11 million, well ahead of Germany, with 4.5 million, and France, with 1.9 million.
The data must be taken with tweezers because, apart from all this mining production, gypsum is also created artificially from residual coal from thermal power plants and lime. It is very common in Poland and other Eastern European countries. However, the forecast is for the progressive closure of coal plants and, therefore, a lower amount of artificial gypsum.
The great business dispute over gypsum is actually taking place in the sheet transformation business. The product in contention is known as pladur, which is the name of the Spanish company that led its manufacture in 1945. "In Spain, Portugal, Angola and Lebanon, laminated plasterboard is known as pladur," explains Ramírez for emphasize the phenomenon, which is due to a television campaign from the 1990s.
Pladur employs 500 people and bills 220 million euros a year, most of it, the result of exports to more than 30 countries. It has factories in Madrid, Catalonia, Aragon, Navarra and Andalusia. The company is Spanish, but the owner is now Belgian and his name is Etex.
Despite the strength of the name, Pladur competes for the Spanish market with two other large companies, which are the German Knauf and the French Saint-Gobain. Between the three they have close to 75%, each of them with an approximate percentage of 25%. There are also eight other smaller operators.
The number of competitors is high if compared to what happens with other European countries such as France or Germany, where only one or two companies dominate the business. The Spanish market is considered fragmented, and the trends now point to concentration.
The signal for future operations is given by profitability. Pladur will grow this year by 30% in terms of revenue, but the real increase is barely 10%, since the remaining 20% corresponds to the transfer of the increase in raw material costs. On the contrary, costs have skyrocketed, especially energy, so that margins are only narrowing.
This lower profitability occurs throughout the sector and will foreseeably trigger a consolidation dance. With purchases, economies of scale are gained and, by reducing competition, it will be easier to defend prices. In addition, investing in new factories, with the cost of financing, is more expensive, so it is more worthwhile to make an offer to a small operator.
Much of the blame for this trend lies with the cost of energy. Plaster is a gas-intensive business, that is, it requires a large amount of gas, a hydrocarbon that, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has multiplied its price tenfold.
The business association of the sector, called Atedy, denounces that the Government has left plaster out of aid to large gas consumers because its business activity has been equated to concrete and other construction businesses that do not consume large amounts of hydrocarbon . They ask to enter the aid group in which, for example, tile makers are found and ensure that contacts with the Ministry of Industry are constant.
