Ecobuild: KLH looks to grow and widen UK CLT prospects

22 March 2014


The UK may have been through five years of construction downturn, but KLH UK has completed 120 cross-laminated timber (CLT) building projects here in that time.

"That's one every two weeks, which in a market downturn is quite pleasing," said preconstruction manager Tom Holland.

And he added that the market was now picking up. Hence the presence of the Austrian-based company's head of sales and marketing Sonja Moder at Ecobuild. "We're the busiest we've ever been and we've been recruiting,"

said Mr Holland. "We're now up to 35 people in the UK office, from structural engineers, to CAD specialists and administration, and we've been expanding our network of sub-contracted erection teams. We used to use some Austrian engineers, but given the development of market, we've trained people over here to work with our CLT systems, and the teams are now wholly UK."

KLH has grabbed the headlines with the big CLT projects, such as high-rise residential and schools. Recently it completed work on Kingsgate House in London, a seven-storey Wilmott Dixon apartment block and the world's first PEFC project certified building. Its latest large-scale contract is Mayfield Academy in Essex, using 20,000m2 of CLT.

"But we're also looking at smaller work, such as a two-storey prefabricated penthouse roof extension on a six-storey block in St John's Wood, London" said Mr Holland. "We're talking to the bigger housing developers too."

KLH UK has completed 120 projects in past five years