British Gypsum
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Plasterboard |
| Founded | 1915 |
| Headquarters | East Leake, UK |
| Parent | Saint-Gobain |
| Website | www.bpb.com |
BPB plc (British Plaster Board) was a British building materials business: it is the world's largest manufacturer of plasterboard. It once was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. In 2005, the company was purchased by Saint-Gobain of France. The company subsidiary British Gypsum, which was the UK operating arm of the company, operates as a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain, with five manufacturing sites in Britain as of 2012.
The development of plasterboard (a sandwich of gypsum plaster between two sheets of paper) dates back to the late nineteenth century in the USA. The first patent was granted in 1894 but it was not until an American, Frank Culver, persuaded his new employer, Thomas McGhie and Sons, to buy a plasterboard plant from the USA that this new product was introduced to Britain. A site was acquired at Wallasey Cheshire and building started in 1916. However, McGhie’s shareholders could not supply sufficient funding and in 1917 the plasterboard assets were sold to a new company, British Plaster Board Limited [BPB].
The British building industry was initially slow to adopt the new product. Helped by a more modern plant, purchased in 1927, sales gradually increased and by 1932 the Company was able to float on the .The additional capital enabled BPB to build a new factory at Erith in 1934. The Erith plant had the capacity to manufacture the gypsum plaster (the core of the plasterboard product) and BPB began importing gypsum rock from Canada. This encouraged negotiations with other gypsum companies in Britain and a “breath-taking series of take-overs” followed in the next two years, making BPB the dominant force in the industry. In particular, these included the Gotham Company with plaster works in the north of England, and The Gypsum Mines Limited, with its large gypsum mine at Mountfield Sussex.
In 1944, BPB acquired its large rival, Gyproc Products Limited; after that there were only a handful of small companies and when ICI withdrew from the market in 1968 BPB was the 100% British producer of plaster and plasterboard. Organisationally, all domestic gypsum activities were consolidated in the British Gypsum subsidiary and the parent company was BPB Industries. BPB had also acquired the main paper supplier in 1953 – the Aberdeen firm of C. Davidson.
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