Our new Tauriko plasterboard manufacturing facility, which has been several years in the making, will soon be operational. Winstone Wallboards’ Stewart Vaughan has been driving the development right from the beginning, so who better to explain what we can expect – and when we can expect it …

Staying on track despite the odds
When it comes to delivering a project the size and scale of Tauriko, there are few environments more challenging than a global pandemic. The team have endured more than their fair share of sleepless nights, but despite the lock downs, ongoing shipping delays and global procurement challenges, the plant is still on track to be producing saleable plasterboard in May 2023 and be fully commissioned by September 2023.

There is still some risk around those dates – risk mitigation poses a daily challenge for our engineering team and equipment manufacturers – but at the moment we’re still tracking to start commissioning the first plasterboard late March, early April, with the first of the saleable board (10mm GIB® Standard and 13mm GIB® Standard) coming off the production line in May. It will take another good eight weeks from there to get all the other products, such as our GIB Braceline® and GIB Fyreline®, fully commissioned, BRANZ appraised and off the production line.

Bigger is better
One of the biggest benefits of the new plant is its increased capacity. Not only will its immediate capacity be 50% greater than that of the current Auckland facility, but the size, design and layout of the plant also promises plenty of opportunities for future expansion.

Capacity was one of the big drivers of this project, future proofing the business and making sure the site would take us through the next 50 years. We didn’t want to get 20 years down the track and find we’ve run out of capacity and don’t have the room to physically extend the production line. Our initial capacity and existing footprint will carry us through many years to come. Even at current volumes, we’ll be able to service the market and still have plenty of spare capacity. But we’ve also made sure the design of the plant, and the size of the site we’ve procured, allows for future line speed increases, site expansion and increased manufacturing capabilities.

A new centre for innovation
With additional capacity comes the opportunity for more time on the production line to carry out product development.

Running our existing lines at peak capacity this year has meant we haven’t been able to run trials to focus on product innovation or bring new products to the production line. We’re very excited about the chance Tauriko will provide to leverage our spare capacity to test, tune and bring new products to the market.

Gypsum on the move
When it comes to receiving gypsum and turning it into plasterboard, the new plant will be streets ahead, both from a safety and environmental perspective. 

Currently we receive gypsum deliveries from Australia every 6 – 7 weeks. It arrives at Ports of Auckland, is loaded onto the wharf and put into a large stockpile, before being loaded into trucks and delivered to our Auckland site. Once trucks get to site, they drive into the main gypsum shed, drop the material onto the floor and excavators load the material into a stockpile within the shed. At Tauriko we won’t have any of this double handling with the gypsum coming off the vessel  at the Port of Tauranga, straight into large hoppers on the wharf and then into trucks that drive underneath the hoppers to get loaded. This is much better from an environmental perspective with less risk of dust emissions. 

On arrival at Tauriko, the trucks drive into a shed and drop their loads into an in-ground hopper, before driving off through a wheel wash and heading back to Port. The gypsum is automatically conveyed from the in-ground hopper up into the bulk gypsum shed and automatically loaded into a stockpile without the need for excavators. This is a significant improvement from a safety, environmental and delivery efficiency perspective.

FIS service changes
The other main change from an operational perspective is around Winstone Wallboards’ FIS (Freight into Store) service. Currently this operates out of Auckland, but once the new plant is fully operational, it will shift to Tauriko.

Tauranga is still close to the centre of gravity for our FIS markets, which tend to be Central North Island and further South. Basing this service in Tauranga heralds a big change for the business in regard to how we service our markets. But from a customer perspective, there is no real change – merchants will still get trucks turning up with their orders; they’ll just be coming from a different destination.

The future looks even brighter
The new Tauriko plant will be a game changer right from the get-go, but its full potential won’t be realised until further down the track. The long-term strategic plan, and commitment to future proofing the business promises a bright future for New Zealand’s construction industry.

A great example of this is that Tauriko has a waste recycling facility that enables GIB® plasterboard to include recycled gypsum.  It has been designed to have upwards of 10% of our total board volume as recycled gypsum, with options for this to be much higher on some products. It’s not just about recycling our own internal waste, it also poses future opportunities for more sustainable products and the recovery of waste from the market as well. Moreover, it signals our intent to move from a linear economy model, which has an end of life for products, to working in a circular economy.