His Majesty King Charles III has visited a mass timber development in Australia during his official tour of the country. James Jones & Sons’ Australian subsidiary, The Hyne Group, welcomed news of the King’s visit to the Homes NSW Cowper Street development to talk about sustainable housing. He was accompanied by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns.
The Hyne Group supplied the Cross Laminated Timber, manufactured at its XLam plant in Wodonga, Victoria, and the Glue Laminated Timber, manufactured at its Maryborough plant in Queensland, for this social housing development in Glebe, Sydney.
The development is in collaboration with the King’s Trust Australia and, once completed, will deliver 75 much-needed, sustainable social housing apartments and terrace houses.
Specifically, 2,590m3 of engineered timber has been delivered to the site, which sequesters approximately 1,860 tonnes of carbon. This is the equivalent of 934 fewer cars on the road in a year.
Tom Bruce-Jones, Chairman of Hyne Group and James Jones & Sons, said: “We are very proud to have supplied our mass timber solutions to Homes NSW in collaboration with the Kings Trust Australia. As a Group, we actively promote the environmental advantages of structural timber as a renewable, low carbon resource material and we are very grateful that our products were chosen by the NSW Government and Homes NSW to construct this building comprising of 75 units in Sydney.
“We are absolutely delighted to learn of his Majesty King Charles III, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns’ visit to this development as part of the King’s Australian schedule.”
The timber is entirely locally grown in local pine plantation estates, much of which is owned by the NSW Government. The pine trees are approximately 30 years old at the time of harvest. Based on this age class and the Australian pine plantation estate, the timber volume supplied for the Cowper Street Development will be regrown in approximately seven hours.
For the Cross Laminated Timber, the logs are processed at Hyne Timber’s Tumbarumba sawmill before being transported to the XLam plant in Wodonga for secondary manufacturing into CLT panels. For the Glue Laminated Timber, the logs are processed at our Tuan Mill near Maryborough before being processed into GLT at the Maryborough Glulam plant. These manufacturing plants support local, regional jobs and ensure that low carbon, sustainable building products are manufactured in Australia, for Australia.
The Hyne Group is the Australian subsidiary of James Jones & Sons in the UK.
