Portland’s planned Hardwood Timber Manufacturing Hub could replace half the glue-laminated timber Australia imports each year, worth A$70 million, with the completed feasibility study backing a plant that would draw more than $200 million in investment and turn plantation bluegum into the beams Australia now buys offshore. That is according to Russ Hughes, Chair of The Precinct, whose group released the completed study on Thursday, capping work led by the Commonwealth-funded Green Triangle Forest Industries Hub and delivered by consultancy IndustryEdge.
“Phase one of The Precinct has built a compelling investment case,” Hughes said, with the study finding the Green Triangle holds the plantation resource, the industry skills, and the location to lead engineered timber manufacturing in Australia.
Under the plan, a 35-hectare site would take 300,000 tonnes of logs a year through a log yard, sawmill, drying kilns, and a glulam line, with an on-site biomass system supplying all of the plant’s heat. At capacity, the hub would turn out 52,000 cubic metres of glulam each year, plus sawn hardwood, finger-jointed timber, and 180,000 tonnes of woodchips.
Glulam is only the first stage of The Precinct, a long-term plan to build Australia’s largest integrated plantation timber and prefab housing complex, with a second phase adding a Laminated Veneer Lumber line and a third making parts for prefab homes. Developed in full, the project could grow from 74 first-stage jobs to 280 ongoing roles, process more than one million tonnes of plantation timber a year, and produce building components for 20,000 homes, according to the group’s own projections.
Bluegum glulam already exists as a product, with a Commonwealth-backed trial producing the world’s first structural glulam made entirely from the species in 2024, unveiled at the Green Triangle’s Forestry Centre of Excellence and now in the domestic market. Making it at an industrial scale is the step the hub would add, converting a hardwood grown across the region and currently chipped for export pulp and paper markets.
Filling the supply gap is the other half of the case, with the hub designed to cut into the nearly $1 billion of engineered wood products Australia imports each year, according to The Precinct’s figures. New output would also stand in for the Victorian native forest resource lost when harvesting ended in January 2024, an exit the study says has doubled demand for imported products.
“Large volumes of plantation hardwood are exported with minimal processing,” the study states, with the document counting the shortest average log haul of any major Australian processing region, a 350,000-hectare plantation estate, and the deep-water Port of Portland among the site’s advantages.
“The Hardwood Timber Manufacturing Hub stands out as a priority project for Glenelg Shire Council,” Mayor Karen Stephens said, crediting a project shaped by industry, community, Traditional Owners, and government working together. Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation has helped guide the facility design and land-use planning, with training and employment initiatives built into the project.
It comes as Member for Western Victoria Jacinta Ermacora announced the completed study and a Future Portland dashboard on Thursday, with more than $500,000 from the Portland Diversification Fund paying for the work. The next stage carries $1.75 million from the Victorian Government, funding from Australian Forest and Wood Innovations, and more Commonwealth support.
Laminated Veneer Lumber is the immediate focus of that next stage, with production trials due to begin in August, a hardwood peeling trial already underway, and partners including Australian Bluegum Plantations, OneFortyOne, and WTiBeam backing a full Precinct feasibility due in 2027.
“Portland has everything needed to become a major hub for advanced timber manufacturing,” Victorian Minister for Regional Development and Agriculture Michaela Settle said, crediting a skilled workforce and a strong forestry base across the region.
“Victoria grows world-class timber resources,” Victorian Forest Products Association Chief Executive Andrew White said. Speaking on ABC South West Victoria, he added that long-term housing demand will sustain the market for structural beams, particularly in mid-rise residential buildings.
Straddling the border between Victoria and South Australia, the Green Triangle is Australia’s largest plantation forestry region, and on the Victorian Government’s figures, building the first stage would put 150 construction workers on site before the first bluegum beam leaves the Portland line.
