2022 has been a tough year for many people across the industry and with December just around the corner I would like to take a moment of your time to say thank you for your patience as we worked through the supply challenges we experienced this year.

Our focus has always been on serving our customers well and it was difficult to not be able to meet the standards you have rightly come to expect of us. 

Our hard-working team at Winstone Wallboards have given it their all over the past year to lift supply and I know they are looking forward to a well-deserved rest with their family and friends over the holiday period. I hope you too, will have the same opportunity to enjoy some time to relax before we head into 2023.

New Tauriko Facility

Our state-of the-art new plant is well on track to open next year.  Our first shipment of gypsum arrives soon, and we expect to be producing board for sale by May. This facility alone will have the capacity to produce enough plasterboard for the New Zealand industry and I am sure it will restore confidence in Winstone Wallboards.

The New Zealand Herald recently visited the site to view construction progress – and you can check out the article here as well as a Tauriko video update with Fletcher Building's Chief Executive of Building Products, Hamish McBeath.

Plasterboard Supply

We understand that, for the most part, plasterboard is reaching customers as they need it, and while there are still issues in some areas, the general feeling is that we are close to seeing demand and supply come into balance.  We are still running production at full capacity (thanks to the Auckland manufacturing team working through the ‘Christmas-New Year’ period) and will continue to do so until we have rebuilt our resilience stock levels. 

While we remain on allocation, please continue to work closely with your merchants around site readiness timings to help ensure product gets to site when it is required for installation. 

We have a few issues getting pallets back, particularly across the South Island, so if you have any refundable empty pallets on site, please get in touch with your merchant or us as soon as possible to have these returned.

Sustainability

We continue to look for ways to lift our sustainability performance through continuous improvement of our manufacturing and distribution processes and the environmental performance of our products. In this edition, you can hear from our Technical and Development Manager, John Jamison, about what we’re doing to reduce construction waste through our Skip the Skip study and Gypsum Recycling programme. 

Thanks for your time and I wish you all the best for a safe and successful end to the year.

Kind Regards

David Thomas

General Manager

Winstone Wallboards