Australia’s largest developer is ditching traditional steel and concrete for lighter, faster and greener mass timber systems – with Goodman Group breaking ground on a new 15,000-square metre warehouse rising fast beside the Moorabbin Airport.
The building, Goodman’s first built out of timber, is part of a push by the industrial, warehousing, and logistics giant, which has AU $42.75 billion under management, to ramp up adoption not only across Australia but also across the Asia Pacific region, Europe, the UK, and the Americas.
Wood Central understands that the embodied carbon savings—estimated to be 23% over traditional tilt-up steel fabrication— and the accelerated timeframe are major selling points for the project.
According to a spokesperson from Goodman, “Mass timber is modular and allows for faster construction and fewer trucks delivered to the site.” This is itself an important consideration, given that 44,000 vehicles pass the busy Boundary Road site every day.
In total, the warehouse will comprise four units, ranging from 3,500 to 4,300 square meters, with the lightweight timber construction system providing maximum flexibility for tenants to “plug and play” unit sizing. It will also comprise a 25-metre shared hardstand, an eight-metre large canopy, and 99KW solar panels.
According to Jason Little, the CEO of Goodman’s Australian business, the pilot “is a great example of ways we’re exploring innovation, sustainability and flexibility.” Adding that to deliver the infrastructure of the future, “one of our priorities is to trial products and construction methods that are low-carbon, resilient, and provide positive outcomes for our customers.”
Global developers are now looking to mass timber over reinforced concrete
Goodman’s push to trial timber comes after Wood Central revealed that Europe’s top logistics developers are now ditching reinforced concrete for timber – with one of the EU’s largest developers breaking ground on one of the world’s largest all-timber warehouses in Southern Germany.
Dubbed the “timber logistics hall,” the 27,000-square-metre warehouse will be built over a 47,000-square-metre leasehold in one of Southern Germany’s busiest trading areas.
“The new hall is a flagship project for us,” said Adrian Zellner, a member of the Garbe Industrial Real Estate Executive Board. It is our first logistics building, which we constructed entirely from timber.”
“As wood is a renewable raw material, we can further improve the eco-balance of our new buildings. According to initial calculations, for example, we expect a CO2 reduction of up to 66% compared to a development using conventional reinforced concrete construction.”
- To read more about why global warehouse developers want to switch up reinforced concrete for mass timber, click on Wood Central’s special feature.
