Metsä Wood holds housing industry roundtable

9 December 2016


Metsä Wood has held a roundtable focusing on the construction industry and the issues surrounding the housing shortage in the UK.

Housing industry leaders were able to discuss openly their concerns about meeting the government’s targets for new housing as well as the impact of the recent Brexit vote.

The event was hosted by Esa Kaikkonen, executive vice president for Metsä Wood, Henrik Soderstrom, senior vice president of sales for Metsä Wood and Mike Ward, managing director for Metsä Wood UK.

Eric Dean, innovation and production director at Legal and General Homes, was invited to talk at the event as L&G Homes is currently building a factory to produce thousands of cross-laminated timber modular homes to help tackle the housing crisis.

An outcome of the discussions was how challenging the government’s target of building 200,000 homes for national housebuilders growing volumes at 5% per year.

Another key point was the increase in demand for modular, pre-fabricated houses. Building floor and roof cassettes off-site means fewer skilled labourers are required on-site which is a major advantage to housebuilders.

Around 90% of timber frame floors are now built as cassettes because it’s fast and reduces health and safety issues, Metsä said.