“At the start of construction, we set ourselves the goal of being able to produce the first board on October 15 – we think it will work out,” says Rudolf Ortner, co-founder of LOC-Holz. The company, whose name is made up of the initials of the founders Josef Lauss, Rudolf Ortner and Jan Walter Cappelen, will be opening Upper Austria’s first cross-laminated timber plant in Arbing in the Perg district in the next few days.
Cross laminated timber is a wooden building material that is used for ceilings and walls in house construction. Due to its high load-bearing capacity and longevity, Ortner also describes it as “concrete made of wood”. The panels can be up to 16 meters long, 3.5 meters wide and 36 centimeters thick and are therefore also suitable for multi-storey residential buildings. Production is almost completely automated, and the 70 employees “mostly only monitor” the processes. Production robots cut out recesses for doors, windows and sockets.
Up to 25,000 cubic meters
Above all, the company wants to process regional wood: “We have set ourselves the goal of sourcing the raw materials from a radius of 80 kilometers,” said Ortner on the occasion of a tour with Provincial Councilor Michaela Langer-Weninger (VP) and ProHolz Upper Austria Chairman Georg Starhemberg. Mainly knotless spruce and fir wood is used. Cross laminated timber is the only building material with a positive CO2 balance – “the product stores more carbon dioxide than the production causes”.
LOC-Holz has invested 47 million euros in the construction of the production hall. About 25,000 cubic meters of the panels can be produced per year. (fep)
Source: Nachrichten
