Australia’s largest developer has ditched traditional steel and concrete for lighter, faster and greener mass timber systems – with the Goodman Group finally finishing work on a new $50 million warehouse located beside Moorabbin Airport.
The 15,600-square-metre building is Goodman’s first built out of cross-laminated timber and glulam. It is part of a push by the industrial, warehousing, and logistics giant, which has $42.75 billion under management, to invest in modern methods of construction not only in Australia but also in the Asia Pacific region, Europe, the UK, and the Americas.
Wood Central understands that the development’s major selling points is its embodied carbon savings—23% over traditional tilt-up steel fabrication—and the accelerated timeframe. According to a Goodman spokesperson, who spoke at the project’s groundbreaking, “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.
The warehouse comprises four units, ranging from 3,500 to 4,300 square meters. The lightweight timber construction system allows tenants to “plug and play” unit sizing and comprises a 25-metre shared hardstand, an eight-metre canopy, and 99 kW solar panels.
According to Jason Little, the CEO of Goodman’s Australian business, the pilot project “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.
