Australia is emerging as a major market for cross-laminated timber, with projects such as Atlassian Central Tower, the Sydney Fish Markets, and the Adelaide Aquatic Centre making global headlines. However, until now, the vast majority of these developments have relied on established European supply chains for mass timber; however, domestic capacity is growing, with Xlam, NeXTimber, and Cusp now providing both softwood—and in some cases, hardwood—cross-laminated timber (or CLT) to the local market.
Today, more than thirty timber professionals toured Xlam’s Wodonga facility, Australia’s first plant capable of producing large-format CLT panels up to 16 metres long and 3.4 metres wide. As part of day two of the Gottstein Trust’s five-day Understanding Wood Science Course, attendees were guided by Colin Stone, Xlam’s site leader, who showed how the plant’s 60,000-cubic-metre annual capacity has already supplied panels to high-profile builds including T3 Collingwood in Melbourne, the Prince’s Quarter in Sydney – King Charles III most ambitious building to rent project, St Luke’s in Launceston and Westralia 2 in Perth, among others.
“We were fortunate to also receive a presentation from Fiona Zhang, one of Xlam’s structural engineers, who travelled the 550 km from Sydney to Wogonga to present to the group,” according to Helen Murray, Gottstein Course convenor, who said that Zhang was actually a participant on the 2023 Understanding Wood Science course. “She stressed to the group how much she got out of that course when she attended it.”
Based in Wodonga, off the Hume Freeway, Wood Central understands that Xlam can deliver timber panels to 80% of Australia’s major building markets within 24 hours (including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra), a key advantage that can help meet time-sensitive construction schedules.
Kicking off in Wangaratta yesterday, Murray said conference attendees are now en route to Canberra, where they will spend the final three days of the course at the Australian National University (tomorrow) before hearing from a series of keynote speakers, including Harold (Hal) Guida – one of the chief architects of Australia’s Parliment House who will provide attendees with a guided tour of the building and the 20 or more appearance grade timbers used in the building.
- For more information about the course, click here to read Wood Central’s coverage from day 1, which included a tour of the Alpine Truss and Alpine MDF Industries plants.
