Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

AUSTRALIA — The timber aisle in your local hardware store may look a little different if the Coalition is successful in next month’s election. As part of its tilt at government the Opposition has promised to introduce country of origin labelling on timber sold by commercial hardware outlets. In Australia there is no requirement for timber products to be labelled with the country they are from. …Opposition forestry spokesperson Jonathon Duniam said the measure would help people make an informed choice. “We should be making sure it is clear, whether it is a product that you pick up at Bunnings or Mitre 10, you can see that is a product that has come from an Australian forest,” he said. …The Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) supports the idea, which chief executive Diana Hallam says would be similar to what is in place for food packaging.

Timber construction has long been widely used in North America, Scandinavia and Scotland, but has struggled for traction in England — where houses are typically still built by hand out of bricks and blocks. England’s biggest housebuilders are all now pushing to build more with timber. Behind the shift is a worsening shortage of the skilled labour that the industry will need to meet the government’s ambitious target for 1.5mn new homes by 2029, as well as looming environmental regulations that will demand better insulation and less carbon-intensive materials. Industry remains sceptical that this scale of construction can be achieved without financial help for buyers still squeezed by high mortgage rates, or an easing of lending rules. But it also probably lacks the capacity to build at this rate — the highest since the 1960s — without changing how houses are built.

This year’s Wood Protection Association (WPA) Annual Awards and Conference is themed Future-Proofing Demand for Correctly Treated Wood. The half-day conference will take place on May 8 in Leeds in conjunction with the WPA’s 2025 Awards. Among the conference speakers will be Paul Pennick, procurement director, h&b Buying Group, who will cover “What supply chain buyers want from the treated wood industry”. Mr Pennick believes the market potential for preservative-treated wood is strong. The Government’s ambitious infrastructure, homebuilding, and carbon reduction plans align with the benefits of treated wood. …Another topic will be the role of builders’ merchants in treated wood sales. …Ed Suttie, head of consultancy, BRE, will focus on “Changing service life and performance data for treated wood”. The emerging requirement for the declaration of Reference Service Life under the new Construction Products Regulation has sparked a reassessment of how service life is determined and communicated. 

Every year, over 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced. About five percent of that ends up in rivers and eventually the sea, or is thrown directly into the ocean by the fishing industry. Plastic, whether it breaks down into microplastic or not, is an unfolding environmental and health catastrophe that affects the whole planet. Many solutions have been proposed and researchers have now showcased a new material that looks and acts like plastic without the impact. The team is calling it transparent paperboard (tPB). The material is made completely of cellulose and its composition is equal to that of regular paper. The starting point is using regenerated cellulose from plants and wood (but not exclusively as they have demonstrated) and creating a hydrogel that can be shaped and is transparent.

This year’s International Softwood Conference (ISC) will take place on October 22-24 in Oslo, Norway. The popular event, which provides valuable information on international softwood markets, will be hosted by the Norwegian Wood Industry Federation (Treindustrien), in collaboration with the European Timber Trade Federation (ETTF) and the European Organisation of the Sawmill Industry (EOS). The conference itself will be on October 23 at the Clarion Hotel Oslo, in the heart of the city centre. …The conference provides an opportunity to thoroughly examine trends in the timber market, focusing on facts and figures for softwood production and consumption in the most relevant countries worldwide – not just in Europe. Before the conference, on October 22, there will be five different study tours, including the production line at Bergene Holm Haslestad… and the wood paint factory at G3 Gausdal Treindustrier.

An educational complex in France has become a showcase for an increasingly popular prefabricated building technique. Work began in May 2024 on the €80 million (CDN$125 million) 14,500 m2 school facility in the City of Sartrouville, northwest of Paris. Final project delivery is scheduled for November 2026. …From the outset, the objective was to create a facility with a reduced carbon footprint in order to achieve what in France is called Level 3 “Bâtiment biosourcé” (Biosourced Building). This requires certain minimum percentages of bio-based material per square metre of floor area. The designers took a unique approach to material selection, opting for 7,000 m² of load-bearing exterior wall panels made of wood-concrete, representing 75 per cent of the flat exterior surfaces. Wood-concrete is made from a mixture of water and wood aggregates, sourced mainly from PEFC-certified French forest operators, which is then combined with cement.

France-based EV charging station provider Rossini Energy has started selling PV carports and EV charging stations made with wood. “We started by manufacturing 22 kW charging stations with Douglas fir wood, sourced from French forests, rot-proof and renowned for its durability. We then combined our offering with photovoltaic car park canopies, which we now integrate almost automatically,” CEO Luca Rossini told pv magazine France.”They are two inseparable sides of the same coin. They go together perfectly.” Simon Chouvellon, Rossini Energy business manager, claimed that by choosing wood rather than steel for a 10-person shade structure, the company avoids 10 tons of CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to the carbon emissions of an average French individual for more than a year.

AVIGNON, FRANCE — In Avignon, Jakob+MacFarlane has transformed a dated library into a civic icon for the future, all without erasing its past. The newly reopened Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault Library, now dubbed The Canopy, is both a renovation and a reinvention, complete with a rooftop metaphor and a structural nod toward the digital age. Originally designed in 1985 by architects Jacques Prunis and Béatrice Douine, the library sat squarely in the French city’s Saint-Chamand district. Jakob+MacFarlane’s intervention … recasts the building as a symbol of community rebirth. …the design concept by Jakob+MacFarlane centers on the powerful metaphor of a tree.  …the structure offers shelter, light, energy, and growth. The soaring central staircase — its flanks lined with bookshelves — evokes a trunk rising skyward, while the expansive new roof functions as a literal canopy. Constructed from cross-laminated timber and embedded with solar panels, it provides both shade and sustainable energy.

NEW ZEALAND — Green construction materials from the top of the South Island will be used in new multi-storey buildings being constructed at Parliament. Nelson Pine Industries will be providing more than 700 cubic meters of Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL) timber, which will form part of the mass timber frame for the Museum St building, instead of using steel or concrete. Company chief executive Kai Kruse said the LVL timber, which was made using only logs from the top of the South Island, had a high level of seismic resilience. “As well as being lighter and stronger than traditional steel or concrete structures, using a mass timber frame was the more environmentally conscious choice,” he said. The framing will arrive in Wellington from April in partly-assembled sections and will be installed three storeys a time.

Indonesia is one of the active exporters of logs and sawn wood, so the waste generated is very large. One of the applicable technologies developed for the utilization of wood saw waste is to process it into liquid smoke through the pyrolysis process. The application of liquid smoke to plants can affect plant’s growth and production processes due to the presence of acetic acid and methanol. The purpose of this research was to find out about the properties of Surian sawn waste liquid smoke and how it could be used as a biofertilizer an Arabica coffee seeds. …The effectiveness of liquid smoke from sawn wood waste for the increase in height, stem diameter, and the highest number of leaves of coffee seeds was obtained at a concentration of 2.5%.

“We want our towers to be pleasant to look at, and wood can help us to do that,” says Jean-Claude Geha, chief technology officer at Vantage Towers. Today the company has 84,600 towers to its name, with most of these structures made from traditional materials such as steel. However, Vantage has sought to break from the norm and try a different approach with some of its newer tower structures. This is where wood comes in. Although a very small number – 12, to be precise – of Vantage’s tower portfolio are made from timber. …Founded in 2020 by Vodafone, Vantage Towers operates across 10 European countries. …At present, Vantage has deployed its wooden structures in Hungary and Germany, where, in October 2023, the company announced it was building North Rhine-Westphalia’s first sustainable wooden-structured telecommunication mast in the town of Neunkirchen, Siegerland. The 40-meter high Ecopol tower is set to be erected early this year. 

Built by Nature (BbN) is excited to announce the launch of its 2025 global Prize, recognising exemplary real-world applications of the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction in predominantly timber buildings. On April 7, the grant-funding network will open applications for completed and in-use projects, including new builds, renovations, and significant extensions. The Prize will highlight excellence in demonstration of the Principles, with winners announced at the annual Built by Nature Summit in October. Winning buildings will be showcased at high-profile events and a documentary film premiered at COP, included in an international study tour, and presented as examples of responsible timber construction on the Built by Nature Knowledge Hub.

Wood, a traditional and sustainable structural material, has long been used in construction and furniture due to its availability and mechanical properties. However, natural wood’s strength is often insufficient for advanced engineering applications. Now, researchers from Nanjing University have developed a novel self-densification strategy to create super-strong wood that could replace metals and alloys. The team used a combination of partial delignification and a LiCl/DMAc swelling process to release and reorganize wood fibers. This method allows the fibers to move inward and fill the cell lumen, followed by air-drying to achieve self-densification. Unlike traditional compressed wood, which relies on unidirectional compression, this self-densified wood exhibits uniform shrinkage in the transverse area, maintaining its longitudinal dimension.

The headquarters of the construction company Blumer Lehmann in Gossau, Switzerland, illustrate the possibilities of contemporary timber architecture. The collaboration between the Stuttgart-based team at ICD and timber construction specialist Blumer Lehmann builds upon extensive research into curved timber structures. In contrast to the orthogonal grid of the overall building, the tapering surfaces of the atrium articulate two distinct spatial expressions. Convex outward-facing walls offer a textile-like softness, while concave intersections generate sweeping ridges that extend vertically through the structure, modulating light and perspective. These elements simultaneously act as a spatial enclosure and a load-bearing system, transferring forces across five floors with a slender 130-millimeter-wall thickness. The stairway of the atrium is integrated within this timber composition, guiding movement while creating balconies and alcoves.