There’s good reason to expect that South Australia’s timber buildings will become taller, more prevalent, and more complex as engineered wood specialists Timberlink open the doors to its new facilities, according to state premier Peter Malinauskas.
The premier was speaking at the opening of the new $70 million timber mill, NeXTimber at Tarpeena, 400 kilometres south east of Adelaide late last month.
The company says it’s Australia’s only facility that can combine cross laminated timber (CLT) and glue laminated timber (GLT) radiata pine mass timber and the first in Australia to integrate this with a structural timber manufacturing plant.
Mass timber products offer an alternative to traditional construction materials and help reduce the embodied carbon in a project, the company notes. Timber structures using these methods can be built up to 12 storeys and even taller when combined with other materials to build a hybrid timber construction.
Malinauskas said, “This unique facility in South Australia’s Limestone Coast presents tremendous opportunities for value adding, product diversification and market expansion for the state’s $1.4 billion forest industries as well as the ability to contribute to the construction of taller and more complex timber buildings.
“The state government is committed to a smart, sustainable and inclusive economic path for increase resilience and competitiveness for our forest industries, and that is why we were pleased to contribute $2 million of funding towards this new state of the art facility.”
The contribution might have helped South Australia beat a Melbourne contender for the location.
According to the company’s chief sales, marketing and corporate affairs officer, David Oliver said the facility would help modernise the local industry and that each product would be custom made to digitally created designs.
“We actually take those designs and actually output them to a really big router in the factory that can route the panels,” Mr Oliver told the ABC.
“We can manufacture for cross laminated timber up to 16 metres long, 3.5 metres wide and 450 millimetres thick.”
He said the facility would take up to three years to reach full capacity. It currently employs 27 people with the potential to scale to 50 staff.
He said there was interest in the products both from Australia and overseas.
Melbourne-based Triple A Advanced Trusses and Windows, Colin Clemments told the broadcaster that he would be putting in monthly orders for cross-laminated timber products as soon as there was capacity.
“It’s the next generation of commercial building,” he said.
The launch of the facility on 29 February was attended by more than 300 people, including Primary Industries, Regional Development and Forest Industry Minister Clare Scriven, Member for Mackillop Nick McBride and chief executive of South Australian Forest Products Association, Nathan Paine. Grant mayor Kylie Boston and Timberlink chief chief executive Darryl Whicker.