Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts
The "Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts” is a podcast hosted by Brady and Nic, two industry advocates for the field of sustainable construction. In each episode, they interview thought leaders, industry powerhouses, and true supporters of the sustainable building movement. They cover the entire sustainable building spectrum, from forest management to final construction of buildings.
The podcast is designed to educate and inspire listeners about the benefits of Mass Timber. Mass timber is a sustainable building material that has several advantages over traditional materials like concrete and steel. It is strong, lightweight, and renewable, and it can be used to build a variety of structures, from small homes to large skyscrapers.
In addition to discussing the benefits of Mass Timber, Brady and Nic also explore the challenges of sustainable building as a whole. They talk about the importance of forest management, the need for government support, and the challenges of educating both the public and the building industry about the benefits of sustainable building.
The Mass Timber Group Show is a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning more about sustainable building. It is a thought-provoking and informative podcast that will leave you inspired to make a difference.
Here are some of the topics that have been covered on the show:
- The benefits of Mass Timber construction
- The challenges of sustainable building
- Forest management
- Government support for sustainable building
- Educating building industry professionals about sustainable building
The Mass Timber Group Show is available to listen to on a variety of platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and YouTube.
If you are interested in learning more about sustainable building, I encourage you to check out The Mass Timber Group Show. It is a great resource for information, inspiration, and action.
Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts
The Untold Story of Cross-Laminated Secondary Timber w/UKCLT
What happens when academic research meets real-world sustainability challenges? The UKCLT team reveals how they're transforming reclaimed wood into structural-grade mass timber products that extend carbon sequestration while creating beautiful, character-rich building materials.
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Colin, Julia, and Jonas share their journey from university research to pioneering a circular economy business that's challenging conventional thinking about "waste" materials. They explain how their cross-laminated secondary timber maintains structural performance comparable to virgin products while carrying centuries of history within each panel. The conversation explores both technical aspects—from strength grading to manufacturing processes—and the compelling narrative of materials that might have grown for 100 years before spending 200 years in historic buildings, now finding new life in contemporary structures.
The team unpacks their successful demonstration project "Cascade Up," which showcased their innovative approach at the London Design Festival, revealing how even skeptical visitors were impressed by the quality and aesthetic appeal of reclaimed timber products. They discuss the challenges of scaling production, establishing appropriate standards, and creating the infrastructure needed for this circular approach to construction materials
Far from competing with traditional mass timber, UKCLT sees their work as complementary—expanding the total volume of biobased construction materials available and displacing more carbon-intensive alternatives like concrete and steel. For architects, developers, and sustainability professionals, this conversation offers a glimpse into the future where "waste" becomes opportunity and buildings carry tangible connections to the past while embodying circular economy principles.
Connect with the Team
Research Papers:
Strategies for salvaging and repurposing timber elements from existing buildings in the UK
In The News:
Structural timber prototype uses 100% waste from demolition
Mass Timber Prototype Demonstrates Value of Demolition Materials
Looking for your mass timber community? Attend the 2025 Mass Timber Group Summit in Denver Co - Aug 20-22nd!
We're also lovers of timber construction and we want to see as much timber construction as we can. But that's partly why we think the secondary timber, the stuff that's already in the building stock but is coming out and not being very well used, should add to the amount of biobased construction we can do, because the more of that timber source we have, the more concrete and steel we can displace.
Speaker 2:Did you know that you can use reclaimed wood to make cross-laminated timber? Well, today I caught up with Colin, juliet and Jonas the team behind UKCLT to learn how they're doing it. I asked them why they're making it, how it compares to primary CLT and what they see as the best use cases for cross-laminated secondary timber. They unpacked how it's made, the testing behind it and the broader implications for circular sustainable businesses just like them. But before we jump in, the Mass Timber Group Summit is scheduled for August 2025. We're bringing the Mass Timber community together to connect with the latest trends, expert advice from industry leaders and future project teams. Tickets and the call for speakers will be live soon. Go to masstimbergroup to get on the waitlist so you don't miss out. So with that, let's get into it.
Speaker 1:The UK uses quite a lot of mass timber and construction, but we have next to no um homegrown production of clt or some some glulam, but even then the timber is generally imported from um elsewhere in europe we do have is a whole load of mass of waste timber that's generally being discarded, downcycled, and so what we're looking at is the opportunity to shortcut that system of waste management and, instead of ending up with MDF chipboards or just incinerating the material straight away, we're looking at trying to get that in as a feedstock for mass timber.
Speaker 2:How did you guys get started? What kicked you off down this journey? It's not like every day. Somebody just says, hey, I'm going to take reclaimed materials and turn it into cross laminated timber.
Speaker 3:Shall I take that? It's so. I'm a professor of environmental engineering at UCL and Colin approached us in relation to a scholarship that we were offering to do a PhD to a scholarship that we were offering to do a PhD and he came and said he wanted to study reuse of building components. And so we talked. There was a lot of background work several years in fact, of PhD study before Colin hit upon the idea of looking at reuse of timber and in fact I spent a long time trying to convince him that he should be doing reuse of concrete, which I still regret whether we never did that, but there are other people doing that now.
Speaker 2:And so through that conversation, I'm assuming, Colin, you did a little bit of studying on it. Then how did it come into reality? How did it go from idea to action?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I was trying to get to reuse in general.
Speaker 1:I was trying to look at the systems for how a city can enable more of its more reuse of the stuff that's currently being discarded, and so there was this sort of more ephemeral way of looking at that system level, which actually became less ephemeral with time, became a bit more sort of policy focused and infrastructure to support that kind of circular construction.
Speaker 1:But what was really helpful alongside that was to have something that was really practical and tangible. So the timber started out as a case study. Can we take some timber, and in the very first one it was some floorboards in a building that my industrial sponsors for the PhD were going to be demolishing PhD were going to be demolishing and we did the whole process of reclaiming those floorboards, moving them to a place where we could process them, denailing, planing down, getting to the right dimensions, jointing and then making a three-lamella pair of boards that acted as a tabletop for a co-working space that they were also developing. So it was a kind of yeah, very first prototype and something that meant we could look at how the sort of urban systems and the product level systems supported one another.
Speaker 2:I'm really curious on the sustainability aspect, or unpacking that a little bit. And so a lot of people turn to cross laminated timber or mass timber products in general, at least in the entry stage, because they're interested in like, hey, how do we, how do we use better materials, more renewable materials? And when you're looking at replacing concrete or steel members with timber components, people already say, hey, that's a win. What made you want to go like one step further and reclaim timber? That's already been done, like specifically for the UK and where you're at, and reclaim timber that's already been done like specifically for the UK and where you're at.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, we're also lovers of timber construction and we want to see as much timber construction as we can.
Speaker 1:But that's partly why we think the secondary timber, the stuff that's already in the building stock but is coming out and not being very well used, should add to the amount of biobased construction we can do, because the more of that timber source we have, the more concrete and steel we can displace. And I think if you're looking at reuse in general, we want to see it's great London's seeing a lot of reuse of steel now, which wasn't happening a few years ago. Honestly, it's great London seeing a lot of reuse of steel now, which wasn't happening a few years ago. But reuse of timber also means we're extending that carbon sequestration over another whole lifecycle of a building, if it's in the structure, to what's happening at the moment with wood waste. If it goes into MDF and then the MDF gets used once then gets incinerated, maybe that gives you another 10 years of the fibre being in physical use. But if we can use it within CLT and glulam, then 60 years, 120 years, who knows?
Speaker 3:One thing we haven't talked about very much so far is circular economy, and I think it's important to say that this work is being conducted in the context of a UCL hub for research and education in circular economy, ucl CIR, the.
Speaker 3:The primary um definition of the circular economy is cycling of materials at their highest value, which is a way of making the most of of the materials that we extract from the earth and um, and I think that is really one of the underlying things in using secondary timber rather than primary timber or in addition to primary timber, I should maybe say Because in the circular economy we have cycling of what we call technical materials, which are things that go in sort of an endless loop, but then we also have biological, renewable materials, which cascade back down, essentially to soil, usually in some way, and it just makes sense to get the most value out of them once we've extracted them, to keep them in circulation, and in fact, we just think mass timber is a brilliant way to do that, because you can take timber that, in fact, was used at a fairly low value and you're actually upcycling it and then upcycling it away.
Speaker 3:That probably allows it to be reused in some form, even at the end of service life of a piece of cross-limited secondary timber. It can probably be used again before it goes down that pathway of being chipped or burned or whatever.
Speaker 2:I love that and I've heard this from a bunch of different folks that I've talked to in the UK, but also, you guys don't have the same raw material fiber basket that other parts of the world do, so it's like you don't have, you know, millions upon tens of millions of softwood lumber growing in the UK, and so it's also like a you have this resource. It's not being put to its highest and best use. This, this thing called mass timber, is gaining in popularity and adoption, so it's like how do you use what you have to to participate in that part of the industry? Is that also a focus?
Speaker 3:most definitely. Yeah, I think also from the point of view of encouraging development of uk industry in this area, not not just of um, recovered timber, but of recovery of secondary materials, because we import a lot of stuff at great expense and um, and then you know, if it just gets exported um again as as waste, we're really not getting the most out of it. That can't. We can be also in terms of our economy and labor force and so on yeah, that makes a lot of sense dk is also not alone in in that respect.
Speaker 1:Like I think, denmark um netherlands is few densely populated Western European countries where there isn't much forestry and yet timber waste is pretty much ubiquitous in working with reclaimed CLT products from a carpenter's construction point of view than using a virgin CLT panel, if you will.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm, I would say from a kind of mechanical perspective, not at all. And looking at the latest publication of Colin, Julia and Wen-Hsien, they kind of assessed from a structural perspective and showcased that there is no kind of. There's a high indication that the structural values are very much the same, if not even better. I mean to be assessed probably. But from a manufacturing perspective, no difference. And from a kind of handling perspective, no difference, no.
Speaker 2:And so the paper that you just referenced did. I hear that Colin and Julia and one other person were a part of putting that together. Can you unpack that a little bit for me? Because I think one of the questions that came to my mind is, and you kind of answered is like what are the structural application differences for using reclaimed CLT versus that version stuff? Can you explain that for me a little bit?
Speaker 4:I mean, since the challenge, let's say. I mean we know that when you have an old piece of timber, if it's not rotten or has a lot of drill holes or whatever, it's still fine. The strength remains the same if it's kind of still dry and can stay a long time. We have wonderful examples of houses in the Swiss Alps, for example surely in other countries as well which are like 300, 300-400 years old, made from timber almost entirely. So it's not necessarily the timber in itself which loses its value. That means even if you then put it together to a product, even then it stays pretty good. The challenge for us, and I think the challenge a bit for everyone who works with reclaimed timber, is the strength grading or the kind of assessment of strength standards being published or initial draft standards being published that allow us to structurally grade the parts before then kind of laminating it to panel. But that's not yet completely solved, which means there is basically some work to be done on this.
Speaker 2:Can I get a copy of that paper and link it for people to read? Is that something we can do? Absolutely Perfect. Yeah, I'd love to just read it myself, but also to share it with other people. When you're talking about taking these reclaimed wood members, is it primarily like plank style boards or are you reclaiming or in a certain dimension, if you will like? Hey, we're looking for two by eight, three by eight, like whatever, and then also like species. So like, tell me, like what, what size of members you guys are reclaiming? But also, is there like a species limitation?
Speaker 1:Species limitation, only that we're focusing on softwood rather than hardwood. Dimensionally, the smaller they become. Well, there's a sweet spot, of course. We had some that were so big that they wouldn't go through the metal detector aperture, but anything pretty much over an inch and a half by three inches.
Speaker 2:What about length? Are you guys finger jointing?
Speaker 1:We're finger jointing. So yeah again, longer the better, but I think it kind of makes sense to put things straight back into reuse If you don't have to go through the process of turning something into CLT. If you can just directly reuse members as they come, then do that. We're not trying to take away from the existing salvage salvage industry, and the issue tends to be that in demolition things do get shorter, whether whether that's just by cutting off the ends or because it's easier for them to handle if they cut it in half and take, take bits out of the building. Um, in sort, you know, two meter lengths instead of four, and so that's fine, we can work with shorter lengths, whereas to directly reuse that stuff would be pretty difficult.
Speaker 2:So, recognizing that you're not trying to make CLT just for the purpose of making CLT for these reclaim materials that are coming out, because they can be used in other applications, what applications specifically are you guys thinking that reclaim CLT is a perfect fit?
Speaker 1:I think there's loads of opportunities and it's I mean, ultimately I'd like to see it used in the same way, or as close as possible to the same way, that conventional mass timber is used. You know, multi-storey buildings at scale, all the sectors that we're seeing particularly gaining traction with. You know education, residential and so on. I think, to begin with, there's lots of other smaller scale applications that make sense. The demonstrator project that we did last year looked at a sort of volumetric modular structure. That's not our sort of main target, but I think there is a potential market there in producing volumetric buildings that you can drop onto sites. But yeah, lots of other potential uses which the others might want to come in on.
Speaker 4:Julia, do you want to go first?
Speaker 3:No, you go ahead, Younes.
Speaker 4:Compared to traditional CLT. I think CLT made from reclaimed timber has two beautiful stories and that's the history of the material you use. It's a product in our example we're going to probably speak about it later we've used um, we've harvested in central london um, some beautiful old um of different pieces. They were there probably for one 200 years that's what we guess and have been growing before that probably for 100 years. So it's just 300 years in total of history that you take and you manufacture it to something which when it's then locally used, it even kind of gives a kind of tangible source where it comes from.
Speaker 4:I'm not saying that's not the case, for I guess Scandinavian spruce, that's also kind of or wherever it comes from, but it's kind of it was in a building. Somebody has already kind of manufactured it it from, but it's kind of it was in a building. Somebody has already kind of manufactured it. It has a story to tell and and I think to continue this history or this story by reusing it, um is a beautiful um kind of thing on add-on um that we can kind of contribute.
Speaker 2:Sorry, did you? Oh, I was just going to say, as you were speaking, I'm envisioning and I'm referencing some projects in my local hometown where they redeveloped, kind of, a block of an old existing brick building, but they reused a lot of the material and also kept part of the structure when they built this big fancy hotel on top of it. I'm envisioning, you know, hey, this building is coming down for whatever reason. That's why you guys are getting the materials right. The story is, hey, what the components that you pull out of this are. You're keeping that history, you're keeping it there, you're reusing it to replace that same building. I think that would be like a wonderful story to see come to fruition. And I'll pivot back to you because I know I cut you off.
Speaker 4:No, it's exactly that.
Speaker 3:Can I just pop in as well? And because a lot of the time when you do you reuse building materials or whole buildings. It's also aesthetically pleasing to see that history show. And that is something that we actually really noticed in in the mod, in the volumetric module that colin was talking about, is that it's got, you know, a lot of character. It's kind of got more personality. You you could produce cross-limited secondary timber with whatever surface you want and it can look brand new obviously. But it is kind of nice to see some of that history of use in the material as well as there's an aesthetic benefit, I think. Sorry to interrupt you.
Speaker 2:No, no, for my own personal use. So my partner, nick, and I, like the entire reason we got into mass timber is we were trying to use it for our own multifamily developments. And this was several years ago before it was kind of in the conversation for that smaller scale use, several years ago before it was kind of in the conversation for that smaller scale use. But in my mind it's like you know, I love the beautiful, clean, virgin panel look. But I've always talked with my wife specifically. She's like how can you just stress it to make it look, you know, different, give it some character? And I was like, well, you don't even have to do that, that's, that's nice absolutely it.
Speaker 4:It's. It's basically the. It's exactly the point I I'm saying the surface, the texture as well. So I don't we have pictures, um, it's, it's hard to in a picture to really show. It's obviously more beautiful in, in, in real life, and whenever you're in in in the uk, um, we look forward to show, show it, you the product, but it's all the same. It's all softwood but it's kind of due to different age and different kind of history, it kind of gives a quite unique texture and also surface colouring kind of, which I think is beautiful. And, as Julia said, combined with eventual kind of which I think is beautiful, and, as Julia said, combined with eventual kind of even kind of manufacture or kind of like machining signs or old signs that have been added with the axis, like back in the days when they numbered the pieces with this kind of old technique, to include this into a panel, that would just be, I think, a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:And a little bit farther back in the conversation, you had referenced a project or a study that you guys were that you wanted to talk about.
Speaker 3:Can we unpack that Are you?
Speaker 1:talking about the DTU, yeah, I think. Yeah, this, um, yeah. So this began as a um, uh, funding from one of the UK research councils given to UCL for UCL then to give out to researchers who are looking at ways to not do new pieces of research but take the research already completed and apply it in the context of a real industrial sponsor who could then adopt that research and put it into practice. So we were partnering with Porter Cabin who are a market leader in Europe for off-site modular construction and they were interested in whether you could make one of their typical Portacabin modules but do it out of timber and not only do it out of timber, but do it out of reused timber. So we were looking at their typical design and trying to translate that into something that we were able to manufacture using both cross-laminated secondary timber and glue-laminated secondary timber. So we made a glue-lam ST frame, if you will, and then clad that with CLST cross-laminated secondary timber wall panels and had a CLST floor, timber cassette, roof panels with plywood that we salvaged from the production process and more secondary timber and we manufactured basically one third of their typical port-a-cabin module. So when you cut a section through one of these modules. It's a small building but it kind of acts as a stage.
Speaker 1:So we then exhibited it, firstly as part of the UCL Festival of Engineering in the place where we manufactured it, in the Olympic Park, a place called here East, and then in Bloomsbury, in central London, at UCL's central campus. And then a couple of months later it went to the London Design Festival, to a really prominent site just on South Bank, to a really prominent site behind just on South Bank, and that took the pilot to a much bigger audience. It became known as Cascade Up and we can share some images of that. What were the lessons from that? What did we do? Enif?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what were the really quick, what the the reception from the people that saw it like did you, did you learn anything that you weren't expecting, or was it all kind of like right in line with where you guys thought it would go?
Speaker 4:unsurprisingly, nobody really disliked it. I would have been surprised if somebody was. I wouldn't be kind of like, wow, it's nice and it was kind of a really beautiful thing. Colin mentioned it being a stage of kind of speak about the story of reusing material, and not just timber but materials in general. I think to have a dialogue or a conversation on on reusing materials, um, that natural resources on the endless and there is a lot of very valuable material around there which can be used, reused and reused in a really aesthetic obviously and biased way. Um, because a lot of the reactions I don't know if you're calling and julia, you agree, but a lot of the reactions was oh wow, that's reclaimed timber, that looks like new and yes, it looks like new, but it's actually, as we've said, material that has been reclaimed from demolition sites, reused, and I think that kind of idea that something that is reused truly also you mentioned it in the preparation teach people that or to let people know that materials, reused materials, don't necessarily have to be kind of like this vintage downgrading.
Speaker 2:They don't have to look vintage right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly, they can be really kind of like proper, good quality materials. I think that's a wow effect which I quite enjoyed.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because portacabin is a very different thing to the sort of you know. We're talking about kind of aesthetic of reuse before and, like the stories of materials, portacabin is very much an off-the-shelf kind of product. So they're probably not our ideal customer and probably they're not going to be buying our stuff en masse. But I think our ideal customer and probably they're not going to be buying our stuff en masse but um, the that I think they're both interesting aspects of it, like how much can you standardize and make and develop as a not just volumetric, modular but a modular component? That's very um so a smaller scale type of mass timber where it goes together in this kit of parts and it, you know it doesn't rely on, it's very much like, looks like normal CLT but it's in smaller pieces. It sort of enables more adaptability of buildings through their lifecycle and that was one of the things that we were trying to investigate through that project. So that's one angle that differentiates it from normal mass timber. And then the other is this sort of aesthetic potential to use the weathered surfaces of timber.
Speaker 1:And I think people I mean those events were great because we were exposed to a lot of other people from academia, but lots of industry, lots of public engagement, particularly at the London Design Festival, and also policymakers coming in being provoked by what we were doing to say. By what we were doing to say, okay, maybe this sort of circular economy opportunities are closer to being implemented than we thought, and maybe we're partly using the case of UKCLT to say how far off, real, are these types of circular businesses and what do you need to do as policymakers or as people deciding what sort of infrastructure we need in the future? How little do you have to do to make this become real?
Speaker 2:What have you guys identified as some of the I'm sure there's many, but kind of like the key obstacles or challenges that you're hoping to address to encourage more circular businesses like yourselves? You know the the policy sector talking about um, public buy-in, talking about end use cases and insurance is probably a big one, especially being over in the uk with mass timber in general, what are you guys focused on?
Speaker 1:um, you're right, there are many. Um, we, we. I don't see any of them as insurmountable and I think some of those challenges around mass timber in the UK at the moment are not specifically issues for secondary timber. Maybe they become. There's another element of the fire performance question that you know how similar is secondary timber to primary? But our working assumption is that it would be the same. It obviously needs more investigation. I think the, as Jonas was saying earlier, not so much the performance, mechanical performance of the material, but the confidence in mechanical performance through having a grading system that works for secondary timber, that's a big one.
Speaker 3:But then as a business, I think it's how you go from this kind of small scale production one-offs into doing it at scale in a repeated industrialized way, and they're the kind of we're looking for the right stepping stones to take us forward in that, to that sort of destination of being able to do it at scale I think there's also a challenge for us coming from sort of an academic background into the commercial world and, um, and and I think somebody, somebody alluded earlier on to a project that we have that's funded by Horizon Europe, in which we're doing a case study for cross-laminated secondary timber, where we're applying something called the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources, which is part of the United Nations Resource Management System, which is 12 principles to manage resources in a way that support the Sustainable Development Goals.
Speaker 3:And the Framework Classification is a tool to communicate with investors and other stakeholders about the commercial viability and sustainability of resource recovery projects, of the aspects of what makes a CLST business sustainable economically and environmentally and also socially. So I think by having this Horizon Europe project, it's helping us really flesh out what it is that we need to do to address the challenges, to make this a commercial reality and deal and communicate with our stakeholders, the commercial reality and deal and communicate with our stakeholders.
Speaker 2:So we talked about Jonas, talked about the story behind it, we talked about the aesthetic behind it. We talked about you know, the sustainability aspect behind it. No-transcript.
Speaker 3:I think it's the opposite of that. I think it's pushing, opposite of that. I think it's, you know, pushing on an open door. Everyone is amazing and really wants to see this go, and so I think it's the practical challenges of just making it go fast enough. I think that we're facing.
Speaker 2:If somebody were listening. So there's a lot of people from different backgrounds professionally, geographically, etc. That listen to this. What is something that you guys could ask or get help from the Mass Timber community on? Is there certain challenges, people you need to talk to, resources you're trying to get a hold of data, etc. What would really help you guys?
Speaker 4:What would really help you guys? I have one point and looking forward for additional points from Colin and Julia but one point I think we could benefit from while working with used timber is data and experience from other great organizations and initiatives, projects, networks in Germany, in France, even in the UK, in Scotland, not to forget and I think there is a lot of experience now kind of piling up, but sometimes the kind of like dialogue or the exchange of knowledge is not super easy. So I think kind of learning from each other would be a point for me to mention here. Yeah, I mean on.
Speaker 1:I mean, on that point I think you're right there's a need for everyone to everyone working with secondary timber to gather data in a way that's aggregatable and means that we start to build a big enough data set for everyone to gain in confidence.
Speaker 1:I think there's also academics at Edinburgh Napier have pointed this out before there's a similarity with secondary timber and using less frequently used local species in mass timber where there isn't established grading rules and those have to be put together to enable local species to go into CLT.
Speaker 1:So that's possibly an area. I mean, I think there's a question about whether UK CLT and other small startups trying to do similar things in other countries continue to do what they're doing independently, as small scale startups and growing like that, as opposed to partnering with existing large-scale mass timber producers. And at this point I think their business model is so much focused on where the forests are and, as we've talked about, the UK is not that so it doesn't especially make sense, but I think we're seeing increasing interest in urban sawmills and those secondary stocks. So it's how those new bits of infrastructure to enable this other potential feedstock for mass timber to go into to be capitalised upon, you know what's the best mechanism for that to happen? I'd like UK CLT to grow independently, but we shall see able to to grow independently.
Speaker 3:But we see, we shall see. But I think also, I mean, one of the challenges often in the circular economy is between um is for organizations of different scales to work together. So you know, you've got this really quite large by now mass timber, industry using primary sources, and um. You know, if you say what, what we'd like from them, it would be nice if they would engage with us. It would be nice if they would engage with us. It would be nice if there was sort of a continuum where there are virgin sources and secondary resources and it's all part of the marvelous picture of construction with a new renewable, sustainable resource. And I think that's hard because you know they're focused on their forests and their core business plan, and to deal with a small startup, I think is hard. But we would really welcome engagement from these bigger companies to help us understand where in fact, we can fit into the marketplace in a way that is helpful for everyone.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely, and sorry, just to add on this one. I think that's another very important point. And also upstream kind of material supply. We had some great contacts with very motivated demolition contractors supplying feedstock and I completely understand it's something new. You wouldn't probably be used to kind of be open to change maybe some kind of very well-established processes, particularly in a high-price environment such as London where you have very much just-in-time removal of demolition, construction demolition waste, for example. I think a good collaboration with upstream Mativa supply organizations is really important because one other lesson we learned is the quality of the feedstock we get into the process has a dramatic impact in all kind of of, of manufacturing that or and that processing that happens, uh, in, in kind of our, in our environment or in our, you know, in our um kind of mill, let's say and and, therefore um. This collaboration is pretty critical as well.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to see what you guys do at this secondary CLT stuff. I reached out to you guys because I was like, wow, this is awesome. I love what they're doing here. What are you guys working on next?
Speaker 1:What's the next big thing that you guys are moving towards? Well, it would be great to get a larger scale demonstrator project where we can not just test the sort of putting this stuff together at a building scale but go through more of the inevitable hoops that you have to go through, working with all all members of a design team, contractors, insurers to get a thing built and signed off. Um, I so. So you know we want to see practical application, but at the same time we need to support the commercialization. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, another thing we're interested in is exactly how we go about the factory Like. What does the factory look like? Is it a case of the sort of single large-scale place of production, or is there more of a small-scale, maybe a flying factory that can arrive at sites, process timber there or close to where waste is emerging, and then supply it back to do some level of the production there, whether that's all the way through to CLT, or doing something that you can do without so much processing, like nail-laminated or down-laminated timber, and maybe that's a way that it can scale up in a more piecemeal or piece by piece, and then many flying factories can then be operating in different localities, because it's all about relocalizing supply chains on one level.
Speaker 2:So, before I ask my last question, how can people get in contact with you guys and learn more about what you're doing?
Speaker 1:UKCLTcom.
Speaker 2:All right. And then I know I've seen you on LinkedIn, colin, julia, jonas. Are you guys on LinkedIn too? It's kind of where the mass timber industry lives online I found.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll link the website and I'll link you guys down below for your profiles. Down there, school children come around and they were very keen to jump up and down on the, on the demonstrator, to test its structural soundness, and I don't know if that's going to be enough for the insurance industry.
Speaker 2:But it may require a little bit more testing, but it passes in my book but it was a big relief for us when we did the preparation and dimension I'm mentioning to the like okay, it's good, it's safe okay, uh, last question I know there's three of you and usually we do this with one guest, but you've got somebody in an elevator for 30 seconds. What are you telling them about what you do, your mission and where you're hoping to take it?
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't know. I think personally, because I've come from the waste management side, I'm very keen on people recognizing the value of secondary resources and that they need to be integrated into our buildings and our structures for better sustainability, essentially and that I'm hoping that there'll be more acceptance so that we can develop the systems that will allow that to happen.
Speaker 4:Beautiful. I can go next. Um, I just recently had this conversation and I had it actually with my partner, with my wife, and she was like, yeah, you know timber, I, I don't know it, it burns right and I don't know whether, and I was like that's exactly. That's exactly the point. I think it was mentioned before. I see our contribution not as a kind of competition with primary timber industry. It's just another thing on top of a beautiful industry that is growing for a good reason and I think it has so much potential. But we are also concerned with this perception that timber is just seen as a material that has lesser value than steel and concrete, lesser value than steel and concrete, and I would kind of like to change this understanding, this perception, into seeing timber as a construction material that has so much potential and so much value, and I kind of yeah, yes, I agree, future I agree.
Speaker 2:And then, what do you want to close with colin?
Speaker 1:well. Uk clt. We're one of a number of companies trying to lead this uh movement away from the linear economy and into the circular economy and we think there's great opportunity with timber. But we want people to look again at all things that they're currently discarding and see not a problem of waste but an opportunity.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, thanks for sharing what you guys are doing. I'm going to link all those resources that we talked about down below. I encourage people to reach out, talk to you guys about what you're doing, see how they can get involved, see if we can boost up the secondary CLT use, specifically in the UK, of course, but I would love to see something like that take off a little bit more here in North America selfishly. So thanks for joining me, guys. I really had a great conversation.
Speaker 3:Thank.
