Thai gypsum board dumping suspected

After incurring huge losses for several years, a gypsum board manufacturer has asked the government to impose anti-dumping measures on imports from Thailand.

In a public hearing at the Tariff Commission (tc) on Monday, Mark Sergio of Knauf Gypsum Philippines Inc. said since 2023, an increase in imports of Thai gypsum board products was observed, resulting in a 23 percent cut in output.

“We have reason to believe that the threat will continue. We believe it will continuously cause material injury to the domestic industry because Thailand also saw an impact on its utilization capacity last year. And the Philippines is one of the major destinations, or, I think, major markets, where Thailand exports gypsum boards,” Sergio told TC.

Further, he said there is also an impending opening of another 40 million square meters of gypsum board capacity by another brand, BNBM, which they foresee will further impact their industry utilization, “thereby increasing the risk of the Philippines being subject to products or dumped products coming from Thailand.”

China-based BNBM announced that it plans to launch a joint venture with Sinoma International Engineering and its subsidiary Sinoma (Thailand) to build and operate a gypsum wallboard plant there.

Gypsum board, known as drywall, is the premier building material for residential, institutional, and commercial structures’ wall, ceiling, and partition systems.

Labor-intensive industry

With this, Sergio said the group appealed for anti-dumping duty on Thai Gypsum board imports.

“Gypsum board manufacturing industry provides substantial employment to Filipinos through direct and indirect employment. The industry in nation-building through the taxes paid to the government and corporate social responsibility activities in various sectors and local government units. He said that the industry also helps economic growth through local purchases and investments in fixed assets,” he said.

In 2016, Knauf constructed the first gypsum board manufacturing plant in the Philippines at Calaca, Batangas.

Knauf Gypsum Philippines operates under the global Knauf group and has over 90 years of international experience in gypsum-based solutions like boards, jointing compounds, and paper tape.

The TC public hearing is based on the petition of Knauf Gypsum Philippines in 2023 to consider implementing a permanent anti-dumping duty on gypsum wallboard imported from Thailand.

The Department of Trade and Industry, in November 2024, imposed a provisional anti-dumping duty in the form of a cash bond for four months until March 2025.

In a government investigation into the situation, the subsidiary of Germany-based Knauf alleged that wallboard was imported from Thailand at “dumped” prices in 2022.

Other companies claimed that these imports started negatively affecting the market in 2019, which led to lower revenue and decreased profits.