Two New South Australia Colleges to Be Built With Materials From Timberlink’s NeXTimber Facility

The South Australia government has announced that the state’s two new technical colleges will be built with South Australian-sourced timber from Timberlink Australia’s new $70 million (AUD) NeXTimber manufacturing facility at Tarpeena, Australian Rural & Regional News reported (6-25-24).

The technical college at Mount Gambier, which is due to begin construction in early 2025, will be co-located in the research and education precinct alongside the existing TAFE and the new Forestry Centre of Excellence.

The NeXTimber plant is Australia’s only combined cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber (GLT) manufacturing facility and is located adjacent to Timberlink’s state-of-the-art sawmill.

The NeXTimber facility can produce CLT panels up to 16m long and 3.5m wide and GLT beams up to 12m long. These offer an alternative to traditional construction materials and can help to reduce the embodied carbon of a project. Structures using this timber can be built up to 12 stories—and even taller when combined with other materials in a hybrid timber construction.

Minister for Forest Industries Clare Scriven MLC and Minister for Education, Training, and Skills Blair Boyer visited NeXTimber on Tuesday to see some of the timber panels to be used for the new technical colleges roll off the production line.

The state government has committed $208 million to five technical colleges, which will see three opened in metropolitan Adelaide, one in Port Augusta, and one in Mount Gambier, by 2026.