Experiments with explosives and ballistics on cross-laminated timber, or rather a peek behind the scenes of the global CLT industry. On the 21st and 22nd of March, visitors of the Mass Timber Conference in Portland were spoilt for choice. In four parallel series of lectures, around 70 national and international experts explored the still relatively unknown construction material from all sides.
Revolutionize the way of building
In the kickoff session already, Katerra chairman Michael Marks announced nothing less than a revolution of the American construction industry. Over the past 200 years, the way of building has hardly changed and Katerra is aiming to change this now on a grand scale, thus the tenor of Marks' speech. Considering the already raised funds as well as the enterprise's realized projects, this seems quite realistic.
Sawmills must adapt
"To be able to satisfy the lumber demand for solid wood products in the future, the United States need five additional sawmills until 2023." It was Allan Czinger from USNR who caught everybody's attention with this statement and also presented appropriate solutions for the issue he identified.
In detail, however, his lecture was less about new sawing lines and more about possibilities to optimize existing 2-by-4 factories for the production of CLT raw goods. Central topics that are well-known in Europe were a different way of roundwood logging as well as more effective lumber drying.
Noteworthy in this context is the currently still prevailing caution of large sawmill groups. Only one of the new CLT projects in North America that Timber-Online knows of has tangible ties to a sawmill. And also well-known European machine suppliers in the sawmill sector still receive a limited amount of requests.
Apart from that, however, European press manufacturers were very satisfied - next to already ongoing projects, there was talk of "promising projects" and even "more definitive CLT lines in the upcoming years in America".
CLT for military buildings
To European ears, the conference was a mixture between well-known topics and new points of view. Besides fire safety, modular construction, project presentations, or Industry 4.0, the agenda also included results from shooting and explosives tests.
In the United States, cross-laminated timber is a potential alternative construction material for temporary military buildings. For this purpose, however, CLT must have a certain resistance to explosives and bullets.
"You are the history"
Apart from technical and economic information, the fair in Portland mainly focused on forming opinions and creating awareness. The panel discussion at the end of the event - and actually the entire conference - ran under the hashtag "forestproud". Solid wood offers the opportunity to tell great stories and the people behind production are part of these tales and have to spread them.
