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LapWall, Finland’s largest wooden element manufacturer, has been involved in numerous demanding construction projects. One example is Metsä Wood’s new Kerto LVL mill under construction in Äänekoski, Finland. Source: Timberbiz In this project, LapWall was responsible for delivering the roof, including the design, manufacturing, and installation of roof elements. The roof spans approximately 47,700 square meters, equivalent to six full-sized football fields. Roof elements measure up to 2.5 meters x 24 meters, enabling the fast and safe coverage of large areas with minimal lifts. Up to 1,500 square meters of finished roof can be installed in a single day. LapWall specialises in wooden wall and roof elements, which are increasingly in demand due to the rise of industrial construction methods. This approach focuses on pre-manufacturing structural components in factories before transporting them to construction sites. Compared with on-site construction, pre-fabricated products shorten project timelines, improve quality, and reduce moisture-related risks by shifting more work into controlled factory environments. The roof elements for the Äänekoski mill were produced at LapWall’s factory in Pälkäne within 5.5 months. The elements were transported wrapped in protective plastic, which was removed only upon installation, eliminating the need for additional weather protection and saving time. Lightweight wooden elements also provide logistics advantages. For example, LapWall’s delivery to Äänekoski included 696 roof elements, requiring 196 truckloads, far fewer than for concrete elements. Additionally, waste is minimized as the plastic wrapping and any leftover wood can be 100% recycled. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) provide detailed information on the carbon footprint across the supply chain, allowing builders and designers to assess the environmental benefits of using wood as a construction material. LapWall uses Kerto LVL in its products, particularly as the primary beam in roof structures. Kerto LVL enables the creation of lightweight, hollow wooden elements that are exceptionally strong and material efficient. Its hollow structure allows for integrating insulation and ventilation systems directly into the elements. In the Äänekoski project, the roof structure required approximately 800 cubic meters of Kerto LVL. The technical properties of Kerto LVL, including its strength, rigidity, and dimensional stability, make it ideal for element production, even under varying temperature and humidity conditions.  

John Deere revealed several new autonomous machines during a press conference at CES 2025. Building on Deere’s autonomous technology first revealed at CES 2022, the company’s second-generation autonomy kit combines advanced computer vision, AI, and cameras to help the machines navigate their environments. Source: Timberbiz “Our agriculture, construction, and commercial landscaping customers all have work that must get done at certain times of the day and year, yet there is not enough available and skilled labour to do the work,” said Jahmy Hindman, Chief Technology Officer at John Deere. “Autonomy can help address this challenge. That’s why we’re extending our technology stack to enable more machines to operate safely and autonomously in unique and complex environments. This will not only benefit our customers, but all of us who rely on them to provide the food, fuel, fibre, infrastructure, and landscaping care that we depend on every day.” Autonomy Expanding to More Machines: Autonomous 9RX Tractor for Large-Scale Agriculture: Tillage is one of the busiest times of the year for farmers. With the second-generation autonomy kit, featuring 16 individual cameras arranged in pods to enable a 360-degree view of the field, farmers can step away from the machine and focus their time on other important jobs. The advanced autonomy kit also calculates depth more accurately at larger distances, allowing the tractor to pull more equipment and drive faster. Autonomous 5ML Orchard Tractor for Air Blast Spraying: Protecting crops through air blast spraying is a challenging and repetitive job. Featuring the latest autonomy kit with added Lidar sensors to address the dense canopies found in orchards, the initial machine will be offered with a diesel engine. A battery electric tractor of comparable size and capacity to existing diesel 5M/ML models on the market today will follow. 460 P-Tier Autonomous Articulated Dump Truck (ADT) for Quarry Operations: Quarries supply the essential raw materials vital for building roads, buildings, and infrastructure, and it’s a complex process to mine, process, and transport materials. Using the second-generation kit, the ADT will handle the repetitive tasks of transporting material around the quarry to facilitate different steps in the cycle. Autonomous Battery Electric Mower for Commercial Landscaping: Commercial landscaping is a highly competitive industry and having the staff to support different bids is essential. The autonomous commercial mower leverages the same camera technology as other Deere autonomous machines, but on a reduced scale since the machine has a smaller footprint. With two cameras on the front, left, right, and rear, 360-degree coverage is achieved, and staff can focus on other aspects of the job. Select machines will be autonomy ready from the factory and the second-generation perception system will be available as a retrofit kit for certain existing machines, providing customers with multiple paths to adoption based on where they are in their technology journey. The machines are managed via John Deere Operations Centre Mobile, the company’s cloud-based platform. By swiping left to right to start, the machine can be started once placed in the appropriate spot. Through the app, users also have access to live video, images, data and metrics, and the ability to adjust various factors like speed. In the event of any job quality anomalies or machine health issues, users will be notified remotely so they can make necessary adjustments. The fully autonomous machines were on display at John Deere’s CES booth at the Las Vegas Convention Centre. The booth also showcased cutting edge technologies customers across industries are taking advantage of, like connectivity, AI, renewable fuels, and electrification.

Vietnam is the second country in the world that has signed the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), a bilateral, legally binding timber-trade agreement which aims at improving the forest administration and promote legal timber trade to the EU market. Source: vietnamnet.vn Under the VPA, countries that wish to export timber to the EU must have the Timber Legality Assurance System (TLAS) which can prove the legal origin of timber. EU only allows imports of timber with a Forest Law Enforcement, Governance & Trade (FLEGT) certificate. VPA has set criteria that exporters have to satisfy in order to export to the EU, including compliance with regulations on land and forest use rights, on management, the environment and society, on seized timber handling, timber import, transport and trade, and on timber processing and export, as well as regulations on tax and labour. The criteria has posed technical barriers for many timber exporters, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. However, Cuong has advised Vietnamese enterprises not to consider VPA as a barrier, but an opportunity. “In the immediate time, the EU’s strict requirements may cause difficulties or have negative impact on Vietnam’s timber exports, but in the long term, they will be good for the country’s development sustainability,” Cuong said. Regarding VPA compliance, Ngo Sy Hoai, deputy chair and secretary general of Vifores (Vietnam Timber & Forest Products Association), said Vietnam has prepared a legal framework, and control and management to be able to satisfy the requirements set by VPA. However, agencies still need to find an optimal mechanism for FLEGT licensing to every consignment of timber exports, to be sure that the mechanism can match EUDR (EU Deforestation Regulation). To implement EUDR, Vietnam must do two things: first, declare due diligence practices (DDS) on the origin of timber; second, establish electronic evidence of geographical coordinates of the forest area/log lot, ensuring that the purpose of forest use doesn’t change from natural forest to planted forest or to other industrial crops. “The regulations seem to be technically difficult to follow. Vietnamese woodwork enterprises are ready to satisfy the EU’s requirements. There are many subjects related to the regulations, including farmers, merchants, transport agents, and enterprises that process and export products for export to the EU,” Hoai said. According to Hoai, though Vietnam’s timber export volume to the EU is smaller than to the US and other countries, Vietnam will still strictly observe EURD to send a message that Vietnam is concerned about issues related to forests and the wood industry. “Vifores considers the issues related to the EU’s strict requirements on deforestation and forest degradation as both challenges and opportunities,” he said. Currently, some neighbouring countries, such as Malaysia and Thailand, have voiced their opposition to the agreement. If Vietnam can satisfy the requirements upon the agreement, Vietnam will be able to retain the EU market or even expand the market. “Despite big difficulties, we still believe that we can implement EUDR,” Hoai said.  

In the first three months of the National Housing Accord, Australia commenced construction on 43,247 new homes according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Source: Timberbiz This is 4.6% higher than the June 2024 quarter and 13.9% higher than the same quarter in 2023. The strongest growth was in new detached house starts, rocketing 20.5% since June 2024 and up 5.3% over the year to September 2024. Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn said while the strong rebound in new detached house construction has been welcomed by the industry, there is still a long way to go to reach the level of output required to meet the Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes. Over the year to September 2024, the number of new homes commencing construction reached 165,048, well below the 200,000 required. If building activity continues at this pace, Australia will commence construction on just over 825,000 new homes over the next five years. This is around 350,000 new homes short of the Housing Accord target. “Our performance in apartment construction will be the key to whether we meet the target. Apartment construction levels remain too low because the investment appetite is not there. “Low productivity, labour shortages, costly and restrictive CFMEU pattern agreements, a lack of supporting infrastructure and a high inflationary environment all contribute to project costs not stacking up. “If we are going to solve the housing crisis, we need to build more apartments and make them more attractive for people to invest in – only then will we see a lowering of rental inflation and more homes for Aussies,” Ms Wawn said.