Cable logging in the mountains, CLT buildings and the world’s single largest glulam factory were just some of the highlights for UK university lecturers and TTJ on a recent Austrian timber sector tour.
The Western Timber Trade Association’s (WTTA) first ‘Who teaches the teachers?’ educational tour in late September, which TRADA helped to co-ordinate, was part of the UK Timber Trade Federation’s (TTF) new regional engagement programme.
It proved an excellent window on Austria’s timber sector, architectural projects using Austrian engineered timber and an opportunity for the lecturers to communicate what they had learned to their students back home.
Lecturers participating were Aled Davies (Cardiff University), Andrew Thomson (University of Bath), Greg Workman (NPTC Group), Joshua Mudie (University of Bristol) and Martin Gillie (NMiTE), led by WTTA chairman and Binderholz UK’s Wayne Probert and TRADA university engagement officer Tabitha Binding.
The tour was hosted by leading European and Austrian-based sawmilling and timber products business Binderholz, a company which has made massive strides in terms of the size and scope of its operations in recent years.
Binderholz Group
We probably don’t fully know or appreciate the fact that Austria is one of the leading European nations in terms of timber production and the breadth of its value-added products.
Austria ranks as the number four timber producer in the European Organisation of the Sawmill Industry stats for 2018, producing 10.2 million m3 of sawn softwood, which was 5.7% up on 2017.
As tour group participants arrived at Binderholz’s Fügen sawmill and headquarters it was clear this was no ordinary set-up.
For a start, the site has its own visitor centre, gift shop and special tourist trail of its bio-energy facility and wood pellet production, helping people understand about green electricity, district heating, the history of wood and climate change.
And at the centre of the site overlooking the log yard is the SichtBAR corporate entertaining space with ‘Garden of Scents’, which is hired out by bluechip companies for functions and conferences.
The business was set up in the 1950s by Franz Binder, with the headquarters founded at Fügen in 1963.
It has come a long way since then and the headline figures are now incredible under the third generation of the Binder family, led by chief executive officer Reinhard Binder.
There are now 12 sites and over 5 million m3 of logs are cut annually in the Group’s seven sawmills in Austria, Germany and Finland.
This translates to 2 million m3 of solid wood products produced from the 3 million m3 of lumber. Binderholz also produces 60,000 tonnes of briquettes and wood pellets annually, while additionally providing heating for local communities through its bio-energy facilities.
The acquisitions of Finland’s Vapo Timber in 2016 and Germany’s Klenk Holz in 2017 were clearly landmarks in increasing the size of Binderholz’s operations.
There are five sites in Austria at Fügen, Jenbach, St. Georgen, Hallein and Unternberg, while a further five operate in Germany at Kösching, Burgbernheim, Oberrot, Baruth and Wolfegg. In Finland, Binderholz has two mills – Lieksa and Nurmes.
Jenbach Glulam Plant
Value-added products are a big focus for Binderholz, be it glulam, cross-laminated timber (CLT) or multi-layer solid wood panels.
The tour group stopped off at Jenbach, the centre of Binderholz’s glulam operations and the single largest glulam factory in Europe, comprising three production facilities on one site and a 380,000m3 annual capacity.
BSH glulam products here are predominantly straight beams, while curved beams with a minimum radius of 8m are also produced. Both use feedstock from the Fügen mill.
Each timber board for lamellas is strength graded and visually graded on all four sides.
Technology at Jenbach includes Microtec Goldeneye scanning, a Ledinek moulder, a microwave system for drying glue, Springer and HIT handling technology.
One of the latest additions is its “Smart Factory” automated storage and distribution operation in an Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing process.
An automatic high-bay warehouse has been constructed for all complete glulam packages, in which up to 850 individual packages or 2,000m3 of glulam packages can be stored simultaneously. Packages are loaded and unloaded fully automatically via an inhouse programmed warehouse management program, without which on-schedule errorfree and damage-free handling would be impossible.
Around 65 truckloads a day are dispatched on a 24/7 basis.
CLT Architectural Projects
One of the great advantages of the Teach the Teachers visit was seeing the whole supply chain, from forestry right through to end use in architectural projects.
“Seeing is believing,” said Wayne Probert of WTTA /Binderholz UK.
“By visiting the whole supply chain – from forest through milling, production and construction – at the scale Binderholz operates, the lecturers can have no doubt that timber is sustainable and can be used as a construction solution in both small and large scale projects.”
Architectural projects visited included two kindergartens in Innsbruck, a college in Kuchl and two hotels including the Das Posthotel in Zell am Ziller. All involved Binderholz products.
The 640m3 glulam/CLT structure at one of the kindergartens was originally made watertight after just 12 days. Teachers says the building’s success is shown by the children not drawing on the exposed wood walls “because they like it”.
The Das Posthotel is rated as one of the world’s best small hotels and features a CLT extension.
Opposite the hotel, two other buildings are being constructed in CLT – one of which is a luxury hotel being built by Reinhard Binder as a separate business project.
The UK lecturers also saw the Binder HQ office, which uses CLT, glulam and larch three-layer panels on the exterior.
A further fantastic use of wood was at the Kuchl College of Wood Technology, where a new building was constructed in 2016 using 660m3 BBS CLT and 70m3 of glulam, with CLT exposed on the interior. Other areas are clad internally with solid wood three-layer panels.
Adjacent to the building are extensive workshops where students can train on a variety of sawmilling and woodworking machinery, which is sponsored by the machinery manufacturers. Machinery present includes EWD, Paul, Weinig, Vollmer, Alterndorf and Homag.
“Most of the students that come here are already involved in a family sawmilling business,” said Fabian Heissbauer, of Binderholz’s technical sales department.
“This is the only facility like it in Austria.”
Solid Wood Panels
One of Binderholz’s products which is common in Europe but not in the UK is the solid wood panel, the ‘little brother’ of CLT. It is produced at the St Georgen factory at Salzburg, which has recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.
Binder is reckoned to be the third largest producer of this product in Europe.
The company has been having talks about the possibility of opening a second plant and other ideas for further growth. Currently, a CLT extension is being constructed at St Georgen.
The main three-layer panel is produced in 12- 60mm thicknesses and sizes of 5m x 1.25m, 5m x 2.05m and 6m x 1.25m, with E1 classification. Species include spruce, Scots pine, larch, Swiss pine, Douglas fir and white fir.
Typical uses are shopfitting, interior design, furniture, storage and racking, exterior cladding (larch and Douglas fir), with quoted advantages being easy handling, aesthetics, stability, reduced cracking and being relatively lightweight.
“The Alpine region knows the product very well,” said Binderholz’s Monika Moosleitner. “In France we also have good sales of the product.”
Germany is the biggest market for the product but sales are small in the UK, with one small UK distributor currently selling. But Binderholz wants main UK importers to take a look at it as well.
Daily production at St Georgen extends to 10-12,000m2. Here our group saw a wide range of technology including Muhlbock kilns, Weinig Powermat 2500 moulder, Woodeye scanning, Burkle glue spreading, a Dieffenbacher multilayer press and Schelling saw.
During our visit, silver fir panels for the new hotel project mentioned earlier were being produced.
Cross-Laminated Timber
Our final visit in Austria was Binderholz Bausysteme GmbH’s Hallein site, where the company operates a service centre, staffed by 90 experts who work on the timber construction business – project plans, erection planning and organising all machining on panels and connection details.
The location is a former MDF production site, which Binderholz closed five years ago. Binderholz has been stripping out the factory hall equipment in preparation for other group uses.
A new four-storey 1,350m3 CLT office building was finished here in March and adjoins the existing offices.
The “TimberBrain”, as the new office is known, is also a model for healthy construction, with 160 data points measuring thermal conductivity, temperature, thermal radiation, humidity and VOC emissions. The Technical University of Munich is assessing the data and researchers are interviewing staff about their experiences in the building.
A total of 610m3 of Binderholz BBS CLT was used in the structure, while 20m3 of glulam and 100m2 of three-ply solid wood panels were also used.
Actual CLT production takes place elsewhere at three plants – at Unternberg (where Binderholz began CLT production in 2007) and Burgbernheim in Germany, the latter of which has two plants.
The third plant was completed at Burgbernheim this summer to take group CLT capacity up to 320,000m3, making Binderholz the world’s largest producer of CLT.
Hundegger CNC machining centres operate in the factories to rout, drill and cut panels to project specifications.
“We are also delivering blank panels and the carpenters are doing the cutting in their own facilities,” said Binderholz’s Fabian Heissbauer.
BBS panels are made in spruce, larch and pine, with the XL, extra large, format being solely spruce.
The majority of German and Austrian projects for CLT are for floor and roof panels, whereas typically in the UK it is a steel structure and CLT floors.
BBS CLT was used in the landmark Dalston Lane apartment project in London, where B&K Structures was the build partner. The project was organised in six phases, with a 3D model created and each phase broken down into individual panel sizes, with every panel having its own number and being fully traceable.
Binderholz, and many of the participants in the WTTA Teach the Teachers group for that matter, believes there is major future potential for CLT, not just for its structural performance, fire resistance and build speed, but also healthy living as the panels are vapour permeable and therefore selfregulating in terms of moisture.
So-called BBS Thermo walls, as used in the Hallein office project, are pure solid CLT BBS construction without the need for an additional layer of thermal insulation, relying on an external larch façade for the protection of the structural envelope.
