Wood-Construction

The bamboo bioeconomy — engineered bamboo building materials (strand-woven timber, panels, framing and composite decking) from one of the fastest-growing plants on earth — led by MOSO (Netherlands), BamCore and Cali Bamboo (USA) and Dasso (China).

Environmentally safe adhesives and coatings derived from lignin, soy proteins, starch, and plant oils, designed to replace formaldehyde resins and petrochemical epoxies in construction, packaging, and food preservation.

Advanced bio-based structural and functional materials including mycelium composites, nanocellulose, and natural fiber reinforced polymers that replace fossil-derived plastics, fiberglass, and EPS foams.

Lab-grown wood and engineered plant scaffolds — producing timber-like material from plant cell and tissue cultures, guided onto 3D scaffolds and lignified in vitro — an emerging early-stage route to wood without felling trees, led by Foray Bioscience with a research base at MIT, Yale, VTT and the Sainsbury Laboratory.

Forest- and plant-derived pharmaceutical compounds and phytochemicals — paclitaxel from Taxus, curcumin, aged-black-garlic and standardized botanical extracts — produced by Phyton Biotech, Indena, Sabinsa, Natural Remedies and Pharmactive.

Managing forest ecosystems to balance continuous timber and biomaterial yields with carbon sequestration and biodiversity.

Engineered wood for the load-bearing structure of buildings — cross-laminated timber, glue-laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber — replacing steel and concrete in mid- and high-rise construction with a fraction of the embodied carbon, projected to grow the CLT market to $4.38B by 2030 at 18.1% CAGR.

The wild-harvest bioeconomy — non-timber forest products tapped, picked or foraged from wild stands: pine resin and terpenes (DRT), wild blueberries (Oxford Frozen Foods), sustainably-sourced botanical extracts (Symrise) and wild functional mushrooms (Four Sigmatic).