diff --git a/build.xml b/build.xml
index bdf0033f3..531ce6a30 100644
--- a/build.xml
+++ b/build.xml
@@ -300,6 +300,7 @@ under the License.
         <propertyref name="javax.xml.stream.XMLInputFactory"/>
     	<propertyref name="org.apache.commons.logging.Log"/>
         <propertyref name="java.locale.providers"/>		<!-- required for Java 9 compilation -->
+        <propertyref name="version.id"/>    <!-- to detect if we are running on slow Gump VM -->
     </propertyset>
 
     <!-- this can be overwriten to empty when running with Java 9 -->
diff --git a/src/ooxml/testcases/org/apache/poi/xssf/usermodel/TestXSSFSheetMergeRegions.java b/src/ooxml/testcases/org/apache/poi/xssf/usermodel/TestXSSFSheetMergeRegions.java
index 88530dc03..fb7a9c0b0 100644
--- a/src/ooxml/testcases/org/apache/poi/xssf/usermodel/TestXSSFSheetMergeRegions.java
+++ b/src/ooxml/testcases/org/apache/poi/xssf/usermodel/TestXSSFSheetMergeRegions.java
@@ -41,9 +41,17 @@ public class TestXSSFSheetMergeRegions {
                 }
                 System.out.println("Retry " + i + " because run-time is too high: " + millis);
             }
-            
+
+            boolean inGump = false;
+            String version = System.getProperty("version.id");
+            if(version != null && version.startsWith("gump-")) {
+                inGump = true;
+            }
+
             // This time is typically ~800ms, versus ~7800ms to iterate getMergedRegion(int).
-            assertTrue("Should have taken <2000 ms to iterate 50k merged regions but took " + millis, millis < 2000);
+            // when running in Gump, the VM is very slow, so we should allow much more time
+            assertTrue("Should have taken <2000 ms to iterate 50k merged regions but took " + millis,
+                    inGump ? millis < 8000 : millis < 2000);
         } finally {
             wb.close();
         }