WholeTrees Structures  

Madison,  WI 
United States
http://www.wholetrees.com

• Booth: 4821

At WholeTrees we believe in the regenerative potential of structural round timber harvested from well-managed forests and supplied to construction job sites via regional forestry and fabrication networks. The built environment needs low embodied carbon/carbon sequestering materials, and our planet needs climate-smart forestry. Using the inherent strength of structural round timber and millions of years of organic structural engineering, we provide beautiful, affordable, and durable biophilic structural systems which also restore forests.

 Videos

 Press Releases

• WholeTrees Structures and Port Blakely team to bring “Certified Carbon Forest” mass timber products to market (Sep 22, 2021)

  For immediate release September 20, 2021

  Contacts: Timm Locke, WholeTrees Structures
  Stacey Krum, Port Blakely timmlocke@wholetrees.com skrum@portblakely.com 503-806-4831 206-621-3269

  WholeTrees Structures and Port Blakely team to bring “Certified Carbon Forest” mass timber products to market Move allows AEC teams to have an even larger role in the fight against climate change by specifying carbon forest sourced wood products

  Madison, Wisc. – Madison-based mass timber building products fabricator WholeTrees Structures is joining forces with Port Blakely, a Pacific Northwest, family-owned renewable forest products company, to provide sustainable structural mass timber products with verifiable traceability to Port Blakely’s certified carbon forest. Together, their vision is to provide the design and construction industry with innovative wood building products that also contribute significantly to climate change mitigation.

  WholeTrees Structures and Port Blakely will market Structural Round Timber (SRT) and Sawn Heavy Timber sourced from Port Blakely’s certified carbon forest and other sustainably managed forest lands for use in commercial, residential, and recreational structures nationwide. Port Blakely’s 10,000-acre Winston Creek Carbon Forest is the Pacific Northwest’s largest privately-owned carbon forest project to participate in the voluntary carbon market. Certified by the American Carbon Registry, Port Blakely manages Winston Creek on a 60 year or more rotation, up to 25 years longer than the industry norm. This generates additional carbon sequestration, resulting in carbon credits that Port Blakely offers on the voluntary carbon market. Additionally, the longer rotation yields trees that are much larger and of higher quality than is typical and it provides ecosystem benefits including greater biodiversity, improved habitat for fish and wildlife, and cleaner water.

  “Stewardship is at our company’s core and we’re excited to expand the impact of our Winston Creek Carbon Forest by partnering with WholeTrees to introduce new premium timber products to a growing market,” said Mike Warjone, president of Port Blakely US Forestry. “While all wood products have intrinsic carbon benefit, our longterm view and forest management practices result in more beautiful, higher quality structural timber products, and the added benefit is that the forest sequesters significantly more carbon, making it a perfect natural carbon solution.”

  WholeTrees Structures is a sustainability-driven Certified B Corporation with expertise in using origin stories to build markets for niche wood products, such as Structural Round Timber. The driving force behind WholeTrees has always been its founders’ desire to build prosperity between communities and forests by scaling the innate structure of the tree into high value construction markets.

  “The Port Blakely origin story is a perfect fit for WholeTrees and really resonates with me personally,” explained WholeTrees co-founder and CEO Amelia Baxter. “We work with architects and builders who are looking for products that are not only high functioning, but also have a strong sustainability story to tell in and of themselves.”

  According to Baxter, mass timber’s influence on the built environment continues to grow in North America, largely because its advocates in the AEC community pair mass timber’s persuasive carbon sequestration story with the positive impacts of these new markets on the forest ecosystems and economies that produce the products. In the case of Port Blakely, those impacts stem from the additive net carbon sequestration that results from longer rotations and the long-term carbon storage solution offered by modern buildings. As the AEC community gains a deeper understanding of how its procurement decisions can influence forest management practices, it has begun seeking products with “origin stories” that align well with their own priorities around issues such as sustainability and climate change.

  “The trend toward increased supply chain traceability gives us confidence that there is an untapped market for structural wood products that can be produced at scale while also being traceable to a certified carbon forest,” Baxter stated. “We expect this joint initiative will demonstrate this market exists, that it’s growing and that companies like Port Blakely can realize added value for the products that result from their exceptional forest management practices.”

  “Our goal,” echoed Warjone, “is to produce a beautiful, sustainable product and to create a blueprint other landowners can follow, showing them that improved forest management, enhanced carbon sequestration, and profitability are not mutually exclusive.”

  About the partnership
  The Whole Trees/Port Blakely initiative is focused on developing markets for Structural Round Timber and Sawn Heavy Timber products derived primarily from Douglas fir sourced from the Winston Creek Carbon Forest. WholeTrees and Port Blakely will work together to help project teams understand the products and their capabilities, how they contribute to the effort to mitigate climate change, and the role project teams can have in encouraging exceptional forest management by specifying those products.

  About the products
  Structural Round Timber (SRT) and Sawn Heavy Timber are the original mass timber products. For thousands of years humans used them to build the world’s biggest and tallest structures. In its natural form, SRT is 50% stronger than sawn lumber of similar size. Unlike glulam and CLT, both Sawn Heavy Timber and SRT require minimal processing and do not require adhesives, resulting in a better carbon footprint due to lower embodied energy and reduced waste during processing. Their shortened supply chains make it much easier for these products to carry verifiable traceability directly back to the forestland where the trees to make them were grown. SRT and Sawn Heavy Timber compete well with engineered products such as glulam on both price and structural capability. Both can be fabricated to order in specific sizes and delivered directly to the job site.
   

  About Port Blakely
  Port Blakely grows and markets renewable forest products around the globe, owning and managing sustainable working forests in Washington, Oregon, and New Zealand. A 150+-year-old family-owned company whose forestry roots run five generations deep in the Pacific Northwest, they work to advance the ideals and best practices of good stewardship – for their business, their communities, and the environment – to help cultivate a healthy world.
   

  About WholeTrees Structures
  WholeTrees is a rapidly growing, innovative building products service provider and fabricator with 15 years of experience selling SRT into North American construction markets. WholeTrees is adept at both product development and market development and is widely recognized as the SRT industry leader in North America. WholeTrees’ success to date derives from its ability to identify markets and the likely early adopters within market classes, and to create and distribute the tools— both technical and narrative – needed for those markets to embrace its products. At the core of WholeTrees business culture is a strong ethos toward sustainability and a desire to support forest restoration and other forms of sustainable forest management. 

• Original Mass Timber Maine Partners with University of Maine to Compare Structural Round Timber (SRT) to Steel and Glulam (Sep 22, 2021)

  For immediate release September 15, 2021                                                                             

  Media Contacts:

  Greg Cabral, Director of Market Development
  GregCabral@originalmasstimber.com or 207-614-4072 
    

  James Beaupré, UMaine Director of Industrial Cooperation
  James.beaupre@maine.edu or 207-581-1345

  Original Mass Timber Maine Partners with University of Maine to Compare Structural Round Timber (SRT) to Steel and Glulam     

  UMaine expands the scope of its NSFA Mass Timber Study to evaluate materials

  on the basis of cost, structural capability and carbon impact. 

  Ashland, Maine – Original Mass Timber Maine (OMT Maine), a Structural Round Timber (SRT) market development initiative administered by the Town of Ashland, Maine, has contracted with the University of Maine to include SRT in a research project designed to understand the costs, capabilities, and carbon impacts of Maine forest-based building materials that could be used in a hypothetical instructional and research facility.

  James J. Beaupré, Ph.D., E.I., Director of Industrial Cooperation for UMaine’s Office of Innovation and Economic Development, is directing the study. Its initial intent was to assess the impacts on budget, as well as carbon footprint, of using glulam and cross-laminated timber in place of steel and concrete for the building’s structural system. With OMT Maine’s contribution, the study has now been expanded to include the use of Maine-sourced SRT as a mass timber option.

  
  The study, including its SRT overlay, is being conducted by Simons Architects, the Portland, Maine firm whose building design was the basis for the initial study. Simons has reviewed the architectural portion of the project to incorporate SRT in ways that support its overall goals. Thornton Tomasetti, a global engineering firm with offices in Portland, Maine, has assisted by ensuring the structural systems being compared are equivalent from an engineering standpoint; and this autumn, will add SRT to its Life Cycle Assessment report addressing carbon emissions associated with all three of the systems being compared. The group is working with Consigli Construction’s Portland, Maine, office to help assess cost comparisons of the various systems, and with WholeTrees Structures, Madison, Wisconsin, who is bringing expertise on applicable species, connection details, 3D modeling of SRT for digital renderings, and price analysis for the SRT system.

  “We feel lucky to have this opportunity to cost-effectively gather data-driven metrics the AEC community can use as a guide when choosing structural materials,” said Greg Cabral, Director of Market Development for OMT Maine. “We’re confident SRT will look good compared to the other options and we’re looking forward to sharing the results with design teams as well as contractors and building owners.”

  Amelia Baxter, CEO of WholeTrees Structures, an SRT manufacturer serving OMT Maine as a consultant, said the study is a step in the right direction for the SRT industry. “We know we have a very strong carbon and sustainability story and that we can compete favorably on cost in many structural applications” she said. “This study will help us prove that.”

  OMT Maine expects results from the cost and feasibility study later this year, to be followed by the Life Cycle Assessment Report in early 2022.

  About Original Mass Timber Maine

  OMT Maine is a fully funded three-year initiative designed to help private sector entities in and around the Town of Ashland to realize the potential Structural Round Timber offers for supporting rural economic development. Its objective is to demonstrate meaningful interest in and demand for SRT products, support the long-standing history of sustainable management of the Northern Maine forest, and attract private investment in SRT fabrication. Funding for the initiative is provided by the Forest Opportunity Roadmap coalition (FOR/Maine), in partnership with the Maine Development Foundation (MDF), and the Future Forest Economy Initiative (FFEI), coordinated by the Northern Forest Center. The effort is administered by the Town of Ashland and led by a steering committee of stakeholders representing private industry, Maine’s forest-related economic development efforts, funding partners, and the building design and construction sector. Its goal is to develop markets that will, by the end of year three, drive $2 million in SRT sales for private sector producers located in and around Maine.

  Facts about Structural Round Timber (SRT)

  • SRT is 50% stronger than sawn heavy timber of the same diameter.
  • SRT has structural applications as trusses, columns and beams in building projects of all types.
  • Also known as the Original Mass Timber, SRT complements other mass timber products and competes favorably on both cost and sustainability with the products it might replace.
  • SRT can be sourced regionally, with “Origin Stories” for SRT columns, beams and trusses connecting building users to specific forests and communities.
  • SRT retains the natural form of whole trees, enhancing its contribution to biophilic aspects of the built environment.
  • SRT is a renewable resource derived from sustainably managed forests; it requires minimal processing.
  • 50% of the dry weight of wood is carbon sequestered from the atmosphere by trees as they grow. That carbon remains in the wood products used in construction. Because SRT requires minimal processing compared to milled or engineered wood products, less wood fiber is lost at the mill and much more of the tree’s sequestered carbon is stored in buildings, helping to slow climate change.
  • Wood products require less energy to manufacture and fabricate than building materials such as concrete and steel. Because of its minimal processing, SRT leads the pack in this regard.
  • SRT looks great, can handle the necessary structural loads, and has a fantastic sustainability story.

  Key Links

  https://umaine.edu/foresteconomy/

  https://umaine.edu/econdev/business-industry/

       https://simonsarchitects.com/

  https://www.thorntontomasetti.com/location/portland

  https://www.consigli.com/location/portland-me/

  Additional Resources

  www.originalmasstimber.com – OMT Maine’s web resource for building professionals

  https://originalmasstimber.com/media-news-room/ -- Press Releases and additional media resources

  https://originalmasstimber.com/inspiration-gallery/ -- Precedent global examples of SRT in modern design

  https://northernforest.org/ - The Northern Forest Center

  https://formaine.org/ - Focused on the future of Maine forest products

  https://www.mdf.org/ - Maine Development Foundation

  https://www.sevenislands.com/ - Seven Islands Land Company

  https://wholetrees.com/ - WholeTrees Structures

  https://redshift.autodesk.com/whole-trees/ - Video: Inspired Design Brings Trees a New Life

  
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