The Timber Preservers Association of Australia (TPAA) will explore practical AI applications in plant management and timber protection in front of the delegates at its 2026 Industry Forum at Brisbane’s Swiss-Belhotel on 24 and 25 June, with the AI session running on an agenda that also covers the launch of a new TPAA Code of Conduct, Super Critical Treatment technology, and the buyer expectations preserved wood producers face from government departments and major retailers.
That is, according to TPAA national secretary Jack Norton, the 50-year industry veteran and 2023 IRG Honorary Life-Long Member, who told Wood Central the AI session will address practical, on-the-ground applications inside the treatment plant rather than a high-level technology overview, with delegates invited to flag the plant-floor problems they want covered through the registration process so the agenda can be tuned before June.
“Our members are asking what AI looks like inside their own plants, not in the abstract,” Norton said.
Treatment plants operate on tightly specified vacuum-pressure cycles, solution strengths, and post-treatment quality checks, with the AS/NZS 1604 standard requiring complete sapwood penetration under most preservative specifications and plant operators responsible for in-plant verification. Where AI sits in that production stack, whether on retort cycle monitoring, predictive maintenance, treatment schedule optimisation, or post-treatment QA on penetration depth, is the question the TPAA forum is putting to the room.
“Treatment plants run on cycle times, solution strengths and penetration checks, and every one of those is a measurement problem,” Norton said. “The question we’re putting to the Forum in Brisbane is where the practical AI applications already exist inside the plant and where the marketing stops and the engineering starts.”
The conversation comes after Norton himself, writing in Wood Central in January, set out the gap between best practice and current plant-floor reality, as Wood Central reported, with the majority of treaters of fence palings, fence rails, and landscape sleepers not pre-drying material before preservative treatment, despite best practice calling for it.
The forum runs from 12:30 pm Wednesday 24 June through to 3:00 pm Thursday 25 June at the Swiss-Belhotel in Brisbane’s Woolloongabba precinct, with capacity capped at 80 delegates and registration at $196 per person covering the full programme, networking session and BBQ dinner. The 80-delegate cap is held on a first-in, best-dressed basis, with registration enquiries directed to Norton on 0418 989 398 or [email protected]. The AI session sits inside a 1.5-day workshopping programme, the TPAA has redesigned around small-room conversation rather than the traditional sit-and-listen conference format.
