Push for manufacturing hub making timber products as hard as steel

A new hub making manufactured timber as strong as steel is being investigated in Australia’s ‘green triangle’.

Forestry companies Australian Bluegum plantations, Midway, and New Forests are collaborating with Green Triangle Forest Industries Hub (GTFIH) and the Victorian Forest Products Association (VFPA) to develop a hardwood timber manufacturing hub in Victoria’s Glenelg Shire that could utilise engineered soft and hardwood products.

The group has unveiled plans for feasibility studies that would support a business case to construct an integrated manufacturing hub, examining the best location close to existing facilities which could help grow a new regional hardwood engineered timber product industry.

Australian Bluegum Plantations CEO Russ Hughes said early research has shown a potential new hardwood manufacturing hub could create 40 fulltime jobs as well as more than 100 jobs during its construction phase. He added that it would support new highly skilled jobs and boost the local economy while strengthening the forestry sector.

Midway managing director Tony McKenna said this manufacturing hub could support the development of a sustainable building product that could replace steel or concrete, providing the same durability with less embodied carbon.

During National Forestry Day, the group showcased their latest development. This new engineered wood product, two years in the making, is a Glue Laminated Timber made entirely from the bluegum eucalyptus grown in the region’s green triangle, which runs across Victoria and South Australia.

The group’s prototype Glue Laminated Timber product aligns with the Green Triangle Forest Industries Hub’s Splinters to Structures program, which aimed to create hybrid wood products that could meet the rising demand from the housing and construction industries for more sustainable wood.

Glue laminated timber, known as Glulam or GLT, has high strength and load-bearing capabilities and can potentially replace steel and concrete beams in loadbearing structures. While it is made from different, smaller pieces of wood glued together, because all the wood is oriented in one direction within the product it acts as a single solid piece of wood.

Henkel recently announced it would begin producing its Loctite brand of polyurethane adhesives in Australia to support the increase interest in engineered timber for construction, as the world’s tallest timber hotel is built in Adelaide and the world’s tallest hybrid timber building is approved for construction in Perth.

Henkel said that engineered wood had become “an increasingly popular design choice for load-bearing mass timber and high-tech structural engineering application” due to growing environmental awareness around construction and material use.