The BDG (Professional Association of German Geoscientists) names gypsum their ‘Rock of the Year’ for 2022!

Gypsum has an exciting history of formation and possesses highly impressive properties. It is used as a material in the construction industry, as a food additive or as a carrier substance in the manufacture of medicines. As diverse in its uses gypsum is of course one of the main raw materials we use in the manufacture of plasterboard.

Gypsum is both a mineral and a rock. A mineral consists of elements that occur in a chemical compound; a rock is usually composed of several minerals. Gypsum rock occurs in nature as a monomineral rock, i.e. it consists exclusively of the mineral gypsum. Gypsum stone is fine-grained and massive, often white, or can be brown-grey.

It has many uses in everyday life – as a bandage for a broken leg, as plasterboard or as a gypsum plaster compound in construction. Gypsum also plays a major role in the creation of all kinds of moulds in technology, medicine or art. Under the name of alabaster, it is a valuable decorative and sculptural stone.

Quite rightly now recognised as ‘Rock of the Year’!