Swedish timber manufacturer Derome can now erect a six-storey timber apartment block in three days, up from one floor per week when its panelised flat-element system launched 15 years ago, and now running at two full floors per day.
That is according to Anders Carlsson, Sustainability Manager and R&D lead for Derome’s house factories, who exclusively revealed the improvement was never a single engineering breakthrough but the accumulated effect of small, deliberate changes made across every layer of the operation. “We have developed the product, we have developed the process, and we have done it together with the engineers, the carpenters at building sites, those who are working in the factory,” he said. “We want to do it better every day — that’s the challenge in Derome.”
Panels arrive by truck, are unloaded by forklift, and are hoisted onto two cranes running 12-hour shifts. Carlsson said the site crews have worked the same joints and fixing sequences for 15 years, and that depth of familiarity with the product drives the pace as directly as the engineering does.
Wood Central understands Derome also manufactures fully volumetric modules for projects where enclosed, pre-fitted room units suit the brief — though it is the flat-element system behind the three-day six-storey result that Australian delegates will see firsthand when the 2026 Wood Central UK–Sweden Study Tour arrives at the company’s house factory in Värö, near Varberg, in September.
Derome’s ability to keep refining that system comes down to how the company is built: with complete control over the entire value chain from forest to finished house, improvements made at the factory reach the building site without friction or delay.
Carlsson told Wood Central the company’s approximately 100-vehicle delivery fleet has already transitioned to bio-based diesel, and that work is now underway to redirect sawmill residue — currently sold as biofuel for district heating — into manufactured bio-based insulation capable of storing biogenic carbon inside buildings for 100 to 200 years before eventual combustion. “If you can give it a longer life, the value will be higher — and you can change from mineral wools to a bio-based wool in the walls,” he said. “We will reduce the carbon footprint in the building, and we will also add more biogenic carbon — it will be stored there.”
Wood Central understands the Swedish leg of the tour opens in Stockholm before moving through Växjö — Sweden’s timber town — taking in modular construction factories, showcase buildings, Myresjö’s CAD-connected wall panel plant, a robotic apartment manufacturing facility, the Zerorobot facility, and Södra’s integrated CLT line at Värö, closing on Day 10 at Derome’s house factory where Carlsson will host the group. The full updated itinerary is at tour.woodcentral.com.au.
Carlsson said he plans to use the visit to understand Australia’s building conditions as much as to demonstrate Sweden’s systems. “I want to hear how you are producing multi-storey buildings — requirements in Australia, sustainability requirements — and why you are building buildings in wood,” he said.
Co-hosted by Wood Central publisher Jason Ross and Australian Timber Development Association CEO Andrew Dunn, the 2026 tour is limited to 25 participants with spaces allocated in order of full payment receipt — and with Carlsson’s crews now completing two full floors every working day, the system delegates observe in September is running at twice the speed Derome was recording when it launched 15 years ago.
