Simon Dorries – now CEO of Responsible Wood – has always believed in the advantages of working with the media in all its forms to help promote the ‘ultimate renewable’ whether in construction, forestry, or in the lab. Senior editor Jim Bowden talked to Simon on August 8, 2013, in this story published when the wood scientist was CEO of the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia.
The EWPAA laboratory in Brisbane became an impromptu television studio last week when ABC-TV’s current affairs program Landline introduced its national audience to the world of engineered wood and cross-laminated timber in particular.
The program started with the rejoinder that now and then a product or technology comes along which is a game changer … think the microwave oven, the iPod, e-book readers, or the world wide web itself.
Fronting the camera, EWPAA CEO Simon Dorries said he believed new CLT technology would have a similarly revolutionary impact on the construction industry.
Talking up what has been described as ‘jumbo ply’, he said it was a remarkable idea, a remarkable product and that one day Australia would have its own CLT manufacturing plant.
CLT is made from solid wood planks bonded together into large panels and then sandwiched into three, five or seven layers with the in-between layers running cross directionally.
“It is stronger and more resistant than typical wood frame construction. You can’t destroy a wall easily – it’s really very, very resistant,” Simon told Landline.
“Buildings using CLT are quarter of the weight of the same building using concrete. Having less mass also means they will behave better during ground disturbances such as earthquakes,” he said.
Panning the laboratory the Landline camera picked up shelves of tested engineered wood samples – structural plywood, LVL, formwork and I-beams.
Landline, with more than two million viewers and many more watching on-line and on iPod, has been ABC-TV’s main vehicle for current affairs coverage of regional and rural issues and events since 1991.
The multi award-winning show typically features stories, ranging across agri-politics and economics, business and product innovation, animal and crop science, regional infrastructure, climate and weather trends, regional and rural services, music and lifestyles.
The Landline program airs on Sundays at noon, Mondays at 11 am and 6 pm on ABC 1, and on Saturdays at 8 am and 2 pm on the Australia network.
Editor’s note: Dawn of a new era: Eleven years after the EWPAA/Landline story, more than 300 VIPs joined the South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas at the opening (in March 2024) of Australia’s first combined CLT and GLT production facility now operational by NeXTimber by Timberlink’s manufacturing facility in Tarpeena, South Australia.
Thie unique facility in South Australia’s Limestone Coast opened tremendous opportunities for value-adding, product diversification and market expansion for the state’s $1.4 billion forest industries as well as the ability to contribute to the construction of taller and more complex timber buildings.
The newly commissioned facility is Australia’s first and, so far, only combined radiata pine mass timber facility and the first to be integrated with a structural timber manufacturing plant
NeXTimber by Timberlink and domestic suppliers, including Xlam, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods (ASH) and Cusp, have added to more than 20 importers who service a local market expected to surge in the coming years.
The new facility can produce CLT panels up to 16 m in length and 3.5 m in width, utilising glulam beams up to 12 m in length for mid-rise timber and high-rise hybrid construction.
Timberlink’s $70 million journey to build the facility has been four years in the making courtesy of a SA government grant in 2020 during the height of the Covid pandemic before, in 2021, launching the NexTimber brand with the tagline, ‘It’s what better tomorrows are built on.’
Simon Dorries was on the button!
