USG Corporation, headquartered in Chicago, announced Feb. 2 that its United States Gypsum Company subsidiary will invest $132 million to rebuild and modernize its SHEETROCK® Brand Gypsum Panels manufacturing plant in Norfolk, Va.
Planning for and construction of the 25-month project has begun. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006 and could employ up to 140 persons. The modernized facility will be designed to make wallboard from natural gypsum, recaptured (or synthetic) gypsum, or any combination of the two.
The state-of-the-art plant will continue to serve the Mid-Atlantic market, including the key cities of Norfolk, Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, N.C. The modernization will increase the plant’s annual manufacturing capacity by about 180 percent, to 750 million square feet of wallboard. The existing plant, which was built in 1947, has an annual capacity of just 270 million square feet of wallboard.
Including the Norfolk plant modernization, USG has recently earmarked more than $239 million for expanding and updating its manufacturing facilities across the nation to increase production capacity.
