Australian Companies Pursuing Hardwood Timber Manufacturing Hub to Utilize Engineered Soft and Hardwood Products

Three Australian forestry companies, 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 that could utilize engineered soft and hardwood products, @AuManufacturing reported (8-26-24).

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.

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 (glulam) made entirely from the bluegum eucalyptus grown in the region’s green triangle, which runs across Victoria and South Australia.

The group’s prototype glulam 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. Glulam has high strength and load-bearing capabilities and can potentially replace steel and concrete beams in loadbearing structures.

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.