September 18 was World Bamboo Day.

(above image: By Lance Vanlewen – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)

In 2025, this represented a date to herald the remarkable properties of this plant, including the opportunity for structural engineered bamboo (SEB) to play an important role in both supplementing Australia’s demand for construction materials to meet its housing targets, but also the aspiration to do more to reduce the carbon footprint of the construction sector.

Next Frontier Summit

On behalf of ICC Evaluation Service, which has important international experience with SEB, I had the opportunity in June to participate in the Bamboo Society of Australia’s three day Next Frontier Summit. Supported by research undertaken by Jeremy Mansfield OAM, some of which is cited in this article, the Summit showcased the attributes of SEB as a building material and the potential benefits of growing non-invasive species of bamboo as a commercial crop in Australia.

SEB has the potential to become a mainstream building product in much the same way that mass timber construction was over a decade ago and has the potential to complement sustainably sourced timber, where supply struggles to meet demand.

The Summit joined global and local expertise across the full lifecycle of bamboo, from propagation through to examples of how the remarkable properties of this plant can revolutionize construction from carbon-negative cladding to large-span construction in buildings using engineered products. It also served as a platform to discuss gaps in policy settings where bamboo is neither regarded as agriculture or forestry, through to the conundrum of generating demand to support investment in the establishment of a commercial crop, but the difficulty of supplying demand in the absence of a crop.

The event brought together landowners, growers, researchers, architects, engineers, designers, builders, policymakers, investors, developers and sustainability leaders to contribute to the development of a ten-year roadmap and lay the foundations for the future of bamboo in Australia by shaping the supply chain from the ground up. As the President of the BSA, Jennifer Saunders, noted in her address, bamboo has a place in our future economy, our buildings and our land use strategy.

The Benefits of Bamboo as a Crop

Bamboo is one of the world’s fastest-growing, carbon-negative and regenerative crops that can also restore degraded land, purify contaminated water, improve biodiversity and create regional industry. Bamboo as a crop has the following characteristics:

• grows within 3-years for harvesting
• can be harvested annually
• regenerates without replanting, reducing cultivation costs
• sequesters carbon four times faster than many tree species
• produces 35% more oxygen than equivalent tree mass
• continuous carbon sink as the rhizome remains in the ground after harvest
• is less exposed to extreme weather events, including drought
• grows in harsh conditions and on degraded soil unsuitable for other crops
• as only 25% of the culm crop is harvested, the remaining forest helps maintain biodiversity
• has relatively low water needs and its natural properties facilitate the removal of toxins from soil (such as disused mining sites), effectively restoring the underlying water table to its pure state
• the land area in Australia suitable for bamboo cultivation rivals, if not exceeds, the total agricultural area of Europe. This could provide some struggling regional communities with an alternative industry, both as a crop and in value-add processing.

The Benefits of SEB as a Building Material

With buildings and infrastructure currently responsible for almost one third of Australia’s total carbon emissions (source: Infrastructure Australia’s Embodied Carin Projections, July 2024), using materials and products that can improve the embodied carbon and life cycle profile of buildings makes SEB a viable solution. Attendees at the summit heard that SEB:

• helps diversify building material supplies, where shortages and reliance on imports could exceed 40 percent of total supply during peak demand.
• represents an opportunity for the timber industry to diversify and mitigate risk, utilize the technologies it has evolved for fabrication of mass timber construction products and harness its enviable environmental performance characteristics.
• glued laminated bamboo specimens tested under compression at Deakin University consistently produced compressive strength higher than 50 MPa, which is necessary for higher strength applications.
• in addition to its strengths as a standalone building material, SEB can be integrated with existing timber-based products. Recent research has shown that combining bamboo with cross-laminated timber (CLT) can enhance the structural performance of CLT. Moreover, bamboo can be processed using the same manufacturing facilities as CLT, underscoring its compatibility with current production systems.
• has a very different molecular structure to wood, which helps make it more stable in moisture and temperature changes., This makes it around 40 percent denser when made into SEB than engineered wood. As such, its fire performance is better because its carbonization rate is much slower.
• in addition to its use in construction, bamboo is used in cabinetry and furniture.

(Manufacture of SEB for Roof Beams. Source: House of Bamboo)

(Foster and Partners Six Senses Residence, Bangkok. Source: House of Bamboo)

A Global Market for SEB Bamboo

Whilst discussion at the Summit was around using SEB in Australia, it’s clear this material works in other parts of the world. It is used extensively in parts of Asia, where there are established manufacturing facilities and is increasingly being used as a material for marquee buildings. Bamboo is also used for a variety of building material finishes, as well as more traditional applications such as cabinetry and furniture.

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