Gib board shortage, what a farce...

[C_T_Russell]

Makes plywood look as cheap as chips in comparason, and TBH is a far better quality product!
its amazing how much people will pay for a shitty piece of plaster and cardboard.
I know a few people are using plywood instead.

[king1]

Have to agree the shortage is all a bit of a farce, I hear their is pressure on management to resign now because of it...

Not sure I would be using plywood though, it's a pretty scungy product and not too many nice ways of finishing it. You really can't beat plaster board for the nicely finished surface you can create with it...

[Oh_hunnihunni]

A lot of designers and architects use ply very effectively. Perhaps now more will.

[Olive]

Isn't part of the problem down to Gib being the only product that most Councils will approve? New builds have to abide by the Building Code, and I have a feeling that Fletchers have been enjoying and encouraging special treatment for a long time at the expense of other equally reliable products. Or am I being a CT now?

[king1]

Isn't part of the problem down to Gib being the only product that most Councils will approve?  New builds have to abide by the Building Code,  and I  have a feeling that Fletchers have been enjoying and encouraging special treatment for a long time at the expense of other equally reliable products.  Or am I being a CT now?

correct architects specify the brand name Gib so it must be Gib... 

the other problem being that for some reason we have allowed a near monopoly to exist in NZ

[SueDonim]

The problem is that the architects specify GIB and no substitution is allowed without a new consent. If the government were to allow substitution of equivalent products the problem would largely go away. If the architects wrote up the actual specification required instead of putting in the brand name, the problem would go away.

[Zurdo]

It's a bit hard to get plywood now too of course. I needed a couple of sheets to finish my trailer, and had to settle for 12mm, 15 and 17 not available...get it home and it's really poor quality. Just a trailer, but still....

[harm_less]

The 'leaky homes' issue came about because building standards and permits lacked sufficient detail to ensure they used suitable materials in a weather durable manner. Roll forward a few decades and the Councils have had a severe reaming through the courts so they have reacted by requiring building consents to read like a detailed shopping list of permitted building materials and practices. It is no wonder that the suppliers of all of those permitted materials have construed the situation as an opportunity to corner the market. That's how the modern marketplace works.

Gib is just one such permitted material on any building consent but due to it being a major input into most construction projects it has now become the identified bottleneck in the building industry. There will be many more but in most cases the item can be substituted (or its supply deayed) more readily than this integral panelling.

Hopefully the 'powers that be' conduct an inquiry that sees beyond just the opportunism of Fletchers and observe that the NZ construction industry model is broken and the current interventionism is being widely abused by many other suppliers.

This post should have been broken into more digestible paragraphs but the website is fucking with my formatting