Caunton supplied the structural steelwork for a massive new plaster board factory for Lafarge Industries.

The site is adjacent to the Ferrybridge C Power Station in West Yorkshire whose cooling towers are most visible on the accompanying photograph. The plasterboard manufacturing process utilises a waste product from the new flue gas desulphurisation plant recently commissioned there. This by-product is synthetic gypsum, and gypsum is a major constituent in the manufacture of plaster board. As well as the obvious sustainability benefits, synthetic gypsum has two further advantages over natural gypsum in that it arrives as a powder and does not therefore need to employ a crushing process, and nor does it have to be imported. This “aggregate” of energy saving benefits makes it even more sustainability attractive!

Lafarge currently manufacture in Bristol where the natural gypsum is imported, and manufactures there 50 million square meters of plasterboard - Ferrybridge is budgeted to manufacture 25 million.

The project itself encompasses nearly 30,000 square meters of floor area and requires over 800te of steelwork. An inspiring project overall.