60 | Red Stag Group T T Hugh de Lacy Building greener, lighter and faster “The focus of Red Stag TimberLab is transitioning from more traditional building materials for larger buildings, particularly steel and concrete, to more environmentally friendly carbon sequestering materials – and that means timber.” TIMBER INDUSTRY Getting Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) products used more widely in buildings that are over three storeys high is the core goal of the Rotorua-based Red Stag TimberLab, the engineered wood products arm of the privately owned Red Stag Group whose assets include the biggest sawmill in the Southern Hemisphere. Materials for buildings up to three storeys high comprise 94% of timber materials but for everything above that timber’s share crashes to only around 5%, according to Red Stag TimberLab Managing Director Jason Cordes. “The focus of Red Stag TimberLab is transitioning from more traditional building materials for larger buildings, particularly steel and concrete, to more environmentally friendly carbon sequestering materials – and that means timber,” he says. “Construction makes up somewhere between 15% and 17% of global carbon emissions, which has a huge impact on emissions overall.” The biggest influence on that percentage comes from a building’s superstructure, so all the structural members – foundations, columns, beams and floors – act like an inverse triangle in terms of their carbon output. “So if we’re going to reduce CO2 emissions overall we need to have a reasonable focus on the construction sector, and that raises the question of how we take more concrete and steel out of the process, especially from within the superstructure.” Building in timber not only improves the environment by storing carbon, but construction is significantly lighter, faster and more seismically resilient, Jason says. Red Stag goes a step further, producing electricity and energy for its own operations, exporting renewable green bio-energy to the national grid, and priding itself on being certified carbon neutral. T T to page 62 Kawerau Engineering Limited is proud to support Red Stag Timber Located in the heart of the Eastern Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. Kawerau Engineering Ltd was established in 1965 as a plant maintenance provider and general engineering works. Now in its sixth decade of operation, the company still provides the same high quality integrity based service that it was founded on. +64 7 323 8402 12 Manukorihi Drive, Kawerau info@kaweraueng.co.nz www.kaweraueng.co.nz
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