ROTTERDAM — While billions of trees are cut down annually to clear space for agriculture and obtain wood for manufacturing and construction, a Rotterdam-based startup believes the future of industrial lumber doesn’t require razing forested land.
In fact, it doesn’t require trees at all.
Founded by engineer T.J. Fiala, Structural Biocomposites is on a mission to reduce deforestation by producing tree-free industrial lumber made from hemp, a plant in the cannabis family known for its fast-growing properties.
“An acre of hemp has four times as much biomass as an acre of trees. It’s one of the strongest fibers in the plant kingdom,” said Fiala.
His company was chosen as one of 10 recipients statewide to receive a $50,000 grant through the Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund created by FuzeHub, an Albany nonprofit that gets state funding and helps manufacturers in New York bring their products to market.
To fabricate the new building material, Structural BioComposites uses a manufacturing process to encase a hemp core with layers of industrial hemp canvas, creating a material denser than wood that can still be manipulated with standard tools and scaled in both strength and dimension. The sustainable alternative to forested lumber will sequester carbon from the atmosphere and help to remediate soil, according to the founder.
From his prototype two-by-fours to plywood sheets and more, he explained that the material is characterized by its dimensionally consistent, arrow-straight appearance that is devoid of the natural defects associated with forest service products, such as bowing, twisting, crowning, knots and splintering. It’s also fire-resistant, rot-resistant and not prone to be compromised by wood-destroying insects.
The result: less waste, easier installation and shorter production cycle times. In Fiala’s words, it is…
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