Gypsum Wallboard & Lime Plant
The industry — Lime and gypsum product manufacturing
Base industry report for 3274 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 50
- Under 10 employeesA
- 38%
- Establishments · USA
- 282
- Employment · USA
- 15,851
- Payroll · USA
- $1.3B
Of 50 Canadian establishments with employees, 38% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
Structure decidesThe binding constraint is not executional. Being better than the incumbent does not, by itself, get you in — this one is cleared with capital, an asset, or a permission.
Raise or borrow the entry ticket, or buy an operator who has already paid it. The barrier is money rather than permission, so it yields to a balance sheet — and an acquisition is usually cheaper than a start.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 6
The binding constraint — entry cost + regulatory drag
These are two of the best businesses in building materials, which is the problem. United States Lime & Minerals — 346 employees — turned 2025 revenues of $372.7M into $182.4M of gross profit and $134.3M of net income [A], a 36% net margin on crushed and burned rock. Eagle Materials' Gypsum Wallboard segment earned $286.8M of operating earnings on $764.5M of revenue, a 38% margin, in a year when its prices and volumes both fell [A]. Margins like that survive because nobody new arrives. Eagle's filing counts six wallboard manufacturers in the entire United States, with the four largest holding about 85% of sales [A]; Canada's 50 establishments, 38% of them with fifty or more employees [A], are a short list of industrial sites rather than a population of small entrants. The 327 record puts the barrier for aggregates at the pit permit. Here it is the permit plus what stands on it. Each plant sits on its own deposit — US Lime reports about 70 years of reserves at its Texas quarry and 17 at its Arkansas one; Eagle at least 25 years at every wallboard plant [A] — and the processing is kiln-scale: US Lime's new vertical kiln is a $65M project, Eagle's $330M modernisation covers a single wallboard plant [A]. An entrant needs a high-calcium or gypsum deposit near a market, years of quarry and air permitting, and a nine-figure plant, to sell a commodity into a region where the incumbents can ship by rail and have every reason to defend price. Buying in is no cheaper: a plant earning these margins is not sold at a price ordinary resources can raise. If the capital were solved, the deposit and its permits would still be missing, which is why the cut sits there.
Lime and wallboard are worth more per tonne than aggregate, so they travel further: US Lime ships by truck and rail generally within 400 miles of each plant, and Eagle describes wallboard as distributed mainly in the areas nearest its plants, with rail reaching beyond. Competition is therefore a region served by a few plants, not a national market and not a single haul radius.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 2 of 6 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 6 named · 2 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eagle Materials (American Gypsum)NYSE: EXPA | $765M | — | Gypsum Wallboard segment revenue, fiscal year ended 31 March 2026 (US$) |
| United States Lime & MineralsNASDAQ: USLMA | $373M | — | FY2025 revenues (US$) |
| Saint-Gobain / CertainTeed (Continental Building Products)A | not disclosed | — | Bought Continental at $37.00 a share, about $1.4B enterprise value, completing February 2020; does not report North American wallboard separately |
| Georgia-Pacific, Knauf (USG), National Gypsum, PABCOB | not disclosed | — | With Eagle and Saint-Gobain these are the six wallboard manufacturers Eagle's 10-K counts in the United States; none was separately researched for this record |
| Graymont, Lhoist, Carmeuse, Mississippi LimeC | not disclosed | — | The privately held lime producers — Graymont is Canadian — that hold the deposits a lime entrant would need. None was researched for this record and none publishes results |
| The Canadian establishment listA | not disclosed | — | 50 establishments, 19 of them with 50 or more employees (Statistics Canada, December 2023) — a short list of industrial sites, not a population of small operators an entrant could join |
Evidence
Evidence. US Lime's figures were read in its 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 and Eagle Materials' in its 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, both on EDGAR [A]. The 85% concentration figure is Eagle's own estimate and the plant count is the Gypsum Association's as Eagle cites it — tier A for being read in the filing, but an estimate nonetheless. Both anchors are American; no Canadian producer's financials or Canadian plant ownership list was sourced, and a draft remark that Canadian plants mostly belong to the same multinational owners was removed as unresearched. US Lime's reserve life differs sharply by quarry, so no single figure describes the company. The Continental Building Products terms — $37.00 a share, an enterprise value of about $1.4B — and its Q3 2019 net sales, wallboard volumes and 8.4% fall in average mill net price were read in the company's own results-and-merger release filed as Exhibit 99.1 to its 8-K of 12 November 2019, and the completion confirmed in its 8-K of 3 February 2020, both on EDGAR [A]. Figures circulating in secondary reporting for Continental's expected 2019 revenue and adjusted EBITDA were NOT traced to a primary document and are left off the record, so no acquisition multiple is stated. Georgia-Pacific, Knauf, National Gypsum and PABCO are tier B — they are the makers Eagle's own count implies, not a list read in a filing. Graymont, Lhoist, Carmeuse and Mississippi Lime are named from general knowledge and were not researched. No permitting timeline was sourced. The cut factor is analyst judgment.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
Trade association of gypsum board manufacturers in the US and Canada; publishes fire/sound design manuals and shipment statistics.
Represents lime producers; its site lists US and Canadian lime companies and suppliers to them.
Founded 1970; About page states 40 members from all continents. Runs a General Assembly and Symposium.
Trade magazine covering drywall, plaster, steel framing and insulation - the demand side for wallboard.
Magazine and conference series for gypsum plant operators; site confirms events, news and research for the gypsum industry.
gypsum.org and awci.org (Association of the Wall and Ceiling Industry) both block automated access; the Gypsum Association was confirmed live by search and is listed tier C, AWCI was left off as it is a contractor body rather than a plant one.
Software serving this industry
Vertical software markets filed along the same branch of NAICS — who sells to these businesses, and who an entrant would have to displace.
No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch yet. The base industry report says what the subsector typically runs on.