The prospect of the UK producing the popular cross-laminated timber (CLT) build system could be getting nearer amid rumours of interested parties sounding out machinery suppliers and the imminent completion of a study by Napier University.

In recent weeks TTJ has heard that CLT production equipment suppliers have been contacted by UK-based companies interested in setting up a CLT factory.

Until now the product, popularised by CLT builder KLH in the nine-storey Stadthaus in Hackney, and also known as “massive wood” building, has been imported mainly from Austria and Germany.

An 18-month study by Edinburgh’s Napier University researching the feasibility of commercially producing CLT in Scotland using domestic timber species is nearing completion. A conference scheduled for September 4 will communicate the results.

“We have been talking with two or three different parties about the potential to establish a plant,” said Napier’s Peter Wilson.

TTJ asked him about rumours that a CLT plant could be established within the next year.

“It’s definitely a matter of when, not if,” he said. “But I would be slightly surprised if something was up and running within a year. Two years is more realistic.”

Mr Wilson said a commercially viable plant in Scotland would need to be sited next to a sawmill and would cost £10-15m, whereas a plant in southern England or the Midlands would use imported timber.

He said research had so far indicated reasonable confidence that UK-grown Sitka spruce was suitable for CLT production.

Mr Wilson said the UK was unlikely to compete with the volume manufacture coming out of Stora Enso and MM Holz’s Austrian CLT plants “but we have a very sophisticated timber industry in Scotland”.

TTJ believes that players in the Scottish timber frame manufacturing industry are considering CLT manufacture, while sawmills are also known to have expressed interest.

In 2008, after setting up CLT panel import joint venture Binder Jones with Austrian sawmiller Binder Holz, James Jones & Sons Ltd indicated that its “ultimate” aim was to establish plant using British timber. Its trials included sending its timber to Austria for trial manufacturing into CLT panels.

Napier’s research has included manufacturing three and five cross-ply panels in up to six UK domestic timber species via a test facility based in northern Scotland.