Councils across Victoria’s timber country have claimed Portland’s completed Hardwood Timber Manufacturing Hub study as proof that mill communities can build a future on plantation processing, with a formal call for governments to give every timber town the same pathway. That is, according to Timber Towns Victoria President Karen Stephens, the Glenelg Shire Mayor, whose council association issued the statement on Friday, tying the completed work to its 2026 Government Brief.
The milestone, alongside the council’s Future Portland project, “demonstrates a proactive approach to understanding and preparing for future opportunities across Glenelg Shire,” Stephens said, crediting years of deliberate groundwork by the community and its partners. Hers is the shire that takes in the 35-hectare site, the deep-water port, and the export woodchip trade; the plan would convert it into structural beams.
Released on 24 July, the completed study confirmed the project is commercially and technically viable, in what the group calls an Australian first for the species at this scale. A first-stage investment of more than A$200 million backs a plant turning locally grown bluegum, now chipped for export to pulp and paper mills, into glue-laminated building beams. The Green Triangle Forest Industries Hub, funded by the Commonwealth, led the work, with consultancy IndustryEdge delivering, and more than $500,000 from the Portland Diversification Fund.
Stage one alone would run 300,000 tonnes of logs a year through a log yard, sawmill, drying kilns, and a glulam line making 52,000 cubic metres a year, with 74 permanent jobs, 150 construction roles, and an on-site biomass system supplying all of the plant’s heat. Glulam opens a three-phase program, with The Precinct adding a Laminated Veneer Lumber line, followed by a parts plant for prefab homes. Full development, based on The Precinct’s projections, would create 280 ongoing jobs, more than 1 million tonnes of plantation timber a year, and building components for 20,000 homes.
For the association, the template matters beyond the Glenelg coast, with value-added plantation processing put forward as the answer to the native forest supply Victoria lost when harvesting ended in January 2024. TTV also counts a cut to the nearly $1 billion of engineered wood products Australia buys in each year, on The Precinct’s figures, plus national housing targets and sovereign manufacturing strength, among the gains on offer.
It comes as the John Curtin Research Centre put manufactured timber housing at the centre of a $6.1 billion federal building case, in the Manufacturing Homes blueprint launched at the Australian Labor Party’s National Conference on 25 July. Portland and Orange in New South Wales are already named as the Phase 2 regional manufacturing hubs for National Reconstruction Fund co-investment, with 600 manufactured timber homes proposed as the first federal proof point.
“Proof of what timber communities can achieve” is how the statement describes the completed study, an outcome the group credits to governments, industry, and councils investing in a shared future. Copying Portland is the point of its 2026 Government Brief, presented to six Victorian parties at Parliament House in May, urging governments to align forestry, housing, manufacturing, and regional development policy so that every timber town holds a pathway.
Work on the next stage has already started, with LVL production trials due to begin this month, a hardwood peeling trial underway, and $1.75 million from the Victorian Government joining Commonwealth support for the full Precinct feasibility due in 2027. Australian Bluegum Plantations, OneFortyOne, and WTiBeam remain the industry partners, with Australian Forest and Wood Innovations adding research support.
Every level of government shares the credit in the group’s telling, which congratulates the Green Triangle Forest Industries Hub, Glenelg Shire Council, and all project partners. Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation helped guide facility design and land-use planning, with training and employment initiatives built into the project.
