Off-site wood construction is the future of building
Urbanisation is accelerating and creating pressure to increase housing construction. To answer this global challenge, construction needs to be quicker and more ecological. In Metsä Wood’s new video, Mikko Saavalainen, SVP, Business Development, and Juha Kasslin, VP, Product Management, explain what off-site wood construction has to offer.
At the moment, construction produces 30 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, and it is clear that the course must be changed. We need more ecologically sustainable solutions. Wood is the only major construction material that stores carbon. Wood is a renewable material, and when the wooden parts are no longer used in buildings, they can be reused or recycled.
Another key factor in urban construction is speed. The construction industry is undergoing a major transition, with construction moving from building sites to off-site manufacturing. Elements and modules are assembled in industrial factory conditions and delivered to building sites for quick installation. The lightness and strength properties of engineered wood products, like Kerto® LVL (laminated veneer lumber), make off-site construction a very attractive option.
More efficient construction through prefabrication
Using prefabricated wooden elements significantly reduces time spent at the construction site. As most of the construction work is done indoors, there are no delays due to weather conditions. The turnaround time on building sites is shortened as the amount of errors is reduced and work safety is improved.
Metsä Wood’s cut-to-size Kerto LVL products and optimised element production ensure material efficiency with minimum waste. Kerto LVL products have an excellent strength-to-size ratio, which means less construction material is needed, and therefore traffic to the building site is minimised.
Wood elements together with partners
Kerto LVL products make construction fast, light and green. Metsä Wood is actively building a partner network to increase off-site manufacturing of Kerto® LVL elements for this purpose.
“The Kerto LVL ecosystem means a network of companies with who we can together develop and grow the use of wood elements in construction,” says Laura Mattila, VP, Sales Development Metsä Wood. “The strength of the ecosystem is based on everybody concentrating on their core competence. The sum of this is more than each party trying to do everything by themselves.”
Metsä Wood’s core competence is to produce Kerto LVL products on an industrial scale. Meanwhile, the element manufacturers carry out a lot of product development based on this versatile raw material.
See the video with our views on boosting off-site wood construction.
Images: https://databank.metsagroup.com/l/gsZ5KDDw_dV7
Open Source Wood collaboration platform
To make use of wood elements easier, Metsä Wood has launched a ground-breaking platform: Open Source Wood. There is plenty of innovation, but it’s often not very easy to find. Open Source Wood brings together wood construction experts and their innovations, free of charge. Read more and start sharing at Opensourcewood.com.
For more information, please contact:
Henni Rousu, Communications Manager, Metsä Wood
tel. +358 40 554 8388, henni.rousu@metsagroup.com
Kirk Nichols, VP Sales, Americas, Metsä Wood USA
mobile: (404) 861-1098, kirk.nichols@metsagroup.com
For press information in UK, please contact:
Matt Trace, Director, Defero Communications
tel. 07828663988, matt@deferouk.co.uk
Metsä Wood provides competitive and environmentally friendly wood products for construction, industrial customers and distributor partners. We manufacture products from northern wood, a sustainable raw material of premium quality. Our sales in 2017 were EUR 0.5 billion, and we employ about 1,400 people. Metsä Wood is part of Metsä Group.
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