£100k awarded to innovative timber construction systems
11 April 2018Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) and The Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) have awarded £100,000 of support to seven companies who want to design and develop innovative wood-based products and systems for the construction sector.
Ten applications were received for CSIC and FCS’s recent Advanced Timber Products Innovation Challenge, which aimed to encourage the Scottish timber technologies sector to innovate.
Successful companies were Robertson Timber Engineering, Stewart Milne Timber Systems, Sylvan Stuart Ltd, MAKAR Ltd, JML Contracts, Dualchas Architects and Neat Living. ?
These seven companies will share 120 days of free access to CSIC’s £3m state-of-the-art Innovation Factory facility at Hamilton International Technology Park, with all technical support also included.
Each company will also receive a membership to the Innovation Factory, allowing them future access to the factory facilities at a preferential rate.
The Innovation Factory, has 35,000ft2 of workshop space filled with production and prototyping equipment and technology. Equipment on offer includes an off-site manufacturing cell, digital router, CLT vacuum press and glue adaptor, pilot insulation line and an industrial robot.
Lucy Black, head of business relationships at CSIC, said the companies included large established leaders as well as smaller players, who are a critical part of the Scottish timber engineering and offsite manufacturing sectors.
“The successful companies are working on a wide range of exciting projects from across the timber spectrum, from prototyping new modular housing models in CLT to trialling the blowing of wood fibre insulation into innovative offsite systems and employing robotics in different areas of the production process to increase efficiency and quality,” she said.
