Portland Precinct Shows Investors What Timber Towns Can Build

23 October 2026

 

Portland Precinct Shows Investors What Timber Towns Can Build

Timber Towns Victoria (TTV) has welcomed the momentum behind The Precinct, the engineered timber manufacturing hub planned for Portland, after more than 120 representatives from the investment, government, forestry, manufacturing and construction sectors attended its Investor Symposium in Melbourne on Wednesday 14 October.

TTV President Cr Karen Stephens, who is also Mayor of Glenelg Shire, home to The Precinct’s planned site, attended the symposium as a special delegate.

“Seeing more than 120 investors, industry leaders and government representatives in one room shows how far this project has come, and rewards years of preparation by our community and its partners. The Precinct is proof of what timber communities can achieve when governments, industry and councils invest in a shared future,” Cr Stephens said.

The symposium confirmed Timberlink Australia as The Precinct’s newest industry partner, joining Australian Bluegum Plantations, OneFortyOne, Finland’s Raute and WTIBeam. Tim Woods, who has led the project since its inception, will lead its next phase as the first chief executive.

Woods told delegates that Australian production covers just 26.5 per cent of local demand for laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and glue-laminated timber (glulam). LVL demand reached 400,000 cubic metres in 2025-26, up 35 per cent on the year before, with the annual import total climbing for 30 months in a row.

“Our sovereign housing needs will require us to have sovereign housing solutions,” Woods said.

Stage one, a hardwood sawmill, log yard and glulam line, is a proposed investment of more than $200 million, with the potential to create around 70 permanent operational jobs plus significant construction employment. Fully developed and running on a single shift, The Precinct would make structural components for 20,000 homes a year, Woods said.

Victorian Minister for Agriculture the Hon Michaela Settle MP welcomed the symposium.

“The Precinct is an exciting opportunity to create more value from Victorian-grown timber, attract new investment into our regions and support innovative building solutions that can help meet Victoria’s future housing needs,” Minister Settle said.

Roumiana Vassileva, business development director for engineered wood products at Raute, said Australia exports 10 million cubic metres of softwood and hardwood logs and chips a year, whilst buying in an LVL market rather than creating one.

“Australia is growing the timber, but Australia is importing the product,” Vassileva said.

Timberlink chief executive Paul O’Keefe said Australia would need scale to build sovereign capability, and warned that time was short.

“I don’t think we’ve got five or 10 or 15 years. I think we’ve got probably three. Maybe five, to respond to this threat,” O’Keefe said.

In his keynote, New Forests founder Dr David Brand said strategic investors and government would need to share the early risk of an engineered wood hub at Portland.

“Whenever you’re trying to drive something new like this, you have to have government on board,” Brand said.

Professor Dan Hill, director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, said support for industry must be matched by governments committing to buy timber buildings at scale.

“You can’t just do it from the industry side, and you can’t just do it from the government side,” Hill said.

Dr Corrie Williams, chief of public affairs at Master Builders Victoria, said steel framing had grown since it was added to the Certificate III in Carpentry in 2020.

“Since then, it’s taken off because everyone’s been trained in it,” Williams said.

She said Victoria’s new registration class for prefabricated builders could be “fabulous” if it is set up right.

The Precinct chair Russ Hughes closed the symposium with a challenge to delegates.

“The question is no longer whether Australia needs its manufacturing capabilities. It’s whether we’re prepared to move fast enough to deliver it,” Hughes said.

For TTV, the message from Melbourne reaches well beyond Portland. Speakers repeatedly made the case that government and industry must move together, the same call TTV makes in its 2026 Government Brief, which urges governments to align forestry, housing, manufacturing and regional development policy so that every timber town has a pathway to value-adding its plantation resource.

TTV members will hear more on Friday 30 October, when Tim Woods presents ‘Portland’s Plantation Processing Precinct: A Regional Sovereign Manufacturing Project’ at the association’s annual general meeting in Kerang.

TTV has congratulated The Precinct, its industry partners and Glenelg Shire Council on reaching this stage. More information from the symposium is available at The Precinct.

– ENDS –

Timber Towns Victoria (TTV) is the peak local government body representing councils across Victoria whose communities are sustained by the forest and timber industries. TTV advocates for policy settings that support sustainable forest management, regional employment and the long-term prosperity of the towns and families that depend on working forests.

Media enquiries

Cr Karen Stephens, President, Timber Towns Victoria / Mayor, Glenelg Shire Council

E: secretary@timbertownsvictoria.com.au  |  P: 0488 900 645

Sources: The Precinct media release, Timberlink announced as new partner at Investor Symposium, 14 October 2026 (theprecinctportland.com.au); The Precinct Investor Symposium, Sofitel Melbourne on Collins, 14 October 2026. Timber Towns Victoria 2026 Government Brief, National Forest Policy Reform.

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