Global Drywall Demand to Reach 10.7 Billion Square Meters in 2014

Global demand for drywall (also known as gypsum board, plasterboard and wallboard) is forecast to advance 8.4 percent per year through 2014 to 10.7 billion square meters, a significant improvement over the 2004-2009 rate of growth.  Over four-fifths of all new product demand generated during the 2009-2014 period will be attributable to the US and the Asia/Pacific region.  Drywall sales in the US are predicted to grow 12.4 percent annually through 2014 as the country’s housing market recovers from a period of significant turmoil.  The drywall market in the Asia/Pacific region will record the second fastest growth rate through 2014, after North America.   A number of Asian countries are expected to post large gains, including China, India, Thailand and South Korea.  China alone will account for over one-third of all new global drywall demand between 2009 and 2014. These and other trends, including market share and product segmentation, are presented in World Drywall & Building Plasters, a new study from The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industry market research firm.

The Africa/Mideast region, Eastern Europe, and Central and South America are also projected to see significant advances in drywall sales, spurred by healthy building construction gains.  Turkey, Russia and Brazil will experience particularly rapid growth, as local construction firms increase their use of drywall in wall and ceiling construction applications.  Drywall markets in more developed parts of the world -- Australia, Canada, Japan and Western Europe -- will generally expand at a slower pace through 2014 than their industrializing counterparts.  Nonetheless, several of these countries are still expected to experience impressive drywall demand growth (starting from a low 2009 base), including South Korea, the UK and Spain.

The largest drywall manufacturing countries are the US, China, Japan, Germany, the UK and France, each of which had 2009 drywall shipments of more than 250 million square meters.  Global demand for gypsum-based building plaster is projected to advance 5.3 percent per annum to 36.9 million metric tons in 2014.  The building plaster market will experience somewhat slower growth through 2014 than the drywall market, as construction firms in many countries adopt drywall-based building construction techniques (at the expense of wet construction, which employs more building plaster per unit) because of rising labor costs.  At the global level, drywall demand is nearly two and one-half times greater (on a weight basis) than for gypsum-based building plaster.

  The Freedonia Group is a leading international business research company, founded in 1985, that publishes more than 100 industry research studies annually. This industry analysis provides an unbiased outlook and a reliable assessment of an industry and includes product segmentation and demand forecasts, industry trends, demand history, threats and opportunities, competitive strategies, market share determinations and company profiles.