News in offsite construction

Acquiring 100% ownership of Frutifor Lumber Company (FLC), a sawmill located in Tacuarembó, US businessmen Mark Crandall, founder of PostScriptum, a private equity firm specializing in renewable energy and Matías Abergo of Uruguay, the CEO and co-founder of Enkel Group, a company dedicated to the development and construction of architectural projects, covering different scales and technologies, confirm the arrival of Arboreal.

Infrastructure BC has initiated the procurement process for a major building project on Vancouver Island. The new facility will cover approximately 167,000 sq. ft. (15,500 square-meters) and integrate mass timber elements while meeting CleanBC energy efficiency standards.

Mosser Leimholz GmbH has announced that they are making a pioneering investment and have placed an order with Ledinek for a complete cross-laminated timber production line for their Randegg site in Austria. Ledinek will deliver everything from the raw wood input to the handover of the formatted and sanded CLT elements to the CNC machining centers – including the master computer “X-Lam Manager.”

At a ribbon cutting ceremony held on Friday (7-9-21), the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources officially opened the new Eagle Tower Observation Deck in Door County, Wisconsin. Eagle Tower is 60 feet high. The DNR says the tower was built using “new wood technology.” Construction included glulam, which is described as a “stress-rated engineered wood beam.”

The world’s first hardwood Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) has been officially launched by CLTP Tasmania and along with it their new brand CUSP Building Solutions. Cusp CLT is sourced from certified sustainable Tasmanian Plantation Oak (Eucalyptus Nitens), grown on the Island State of Tasmania, Australia.

A recent report produced by the Canadian federal government’s Green Construction Through Wood (GC Wood) program, “The State of Mass Timber Industry in Canada (SMTC) 2021”, shows just how far mass timber has come since the first two Canadian plants in Quebec and B.C. established cross-laminated timber production lines more than a decade ago.

Canadian-based Structurlam Mass Timber Corp. announced in December 2019 that it would invest $90 million to buy, retrofit, and equip a former steel plant in Conway, Arkansas. In a recent interview, Hardy Wentzel, Structurlam CEO is reporting, “We are trending right on track with our project schedule, our budget is working out well, and our staffing plans are where they need to be at this point.”

Mass timber construction is increasingly finding its place in midrise residential construction, as well as the commercial and office niche markets. Mass timber construction is also finding its place in other areas, including the educational sector.

Swinerton Inc., the Portland Oregon based, 100% employee-owned company, has announced that it will be transitioning the Swinerton Mass Timber brand to Timberlab, while reinforcing the company’s general contracting roots and retaining the company’s vision of the mainstream adoption of mass timber construction.

The town of Ashland Maine recently joined a new initiative that has as its goal to begin investing in a more environmentally sustainable wood building product. Original Mass Timber Maine is a three-year market development program with the goal of opening at least one facility to manufacture original mass timber, also known as structural round timber (SRT), within the next two years.