Round unmilled timber is very strong; it’s about 50 percent stronger than milled timber and as strong as steel in tension. It can span long distances and create a very wide space in a building and can also hold up a lot of weight. Our competitors develop materials that also can span long distances and hold a lot of weight: steel and some engineered wood products. But what our company is bringing to the market is a whole new way to engineer trees. A couple key differences and advantages that unmilled timber offers consumers are:

• We cost just as much as steel and provide an environmentally friendly product. Owners or builders that choose to go “green,” but don’t want to spend more can use our materials.
• Steel requires a great deal of fuel to extract the raw materials, process it and ship it globally – it has very high embodied energy. Our round-timber requires very little fuel to extract, produce and then put into a building. Which means our price point is not dependent on fuel costs. As fuel prices increase over the next 10-20 years, we’ll have a big competitive advantage as we grow...