Our Material’s Carbon Footprint
Want the carbon story? We now have numbers we can stand behind.
Our Blackbutt is the first of our species to carry an independently verified Product Carbon Footprint: a benchmark for where our material lands, and a foundation for what comes next.
If you're specifying, calculating, or just curious: it's all here.
→ What’s a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF)
→ Our numbers
→ Our fossil carbon hotspot
→ Biogenic carbon
→ What the PCF doesn’t capture (but we think you should know)
→ Download the PCF
What’s a PCF? (and how it differs from an EPD)
A Product Carbon Footprint follows international rules to measure greenhouse gas emissions across defined life cycle stages. You may be more familiar with an EPD, an Environmental Product Declaration. An EPD covers a broader set of environmental indicators, but the carbon methodology is the same. A PCF uses ISO 14067 to produce exactly the numbers that matter for carbon calculations: verified, independently audited, and directly applicable to Green Star, NABERS, and procurement schemes.
Our PCF covers cradle-to-gate: from the forest, through transport to our Adelaide factory, through manufacture, to the point the product leaves our gate. Everything beyond that (including installation, use, and end of life) sits outside this report.
The PCF separates emissions into three categories:
Fossil carbon — from burning fossil fuels and industrial processes. This is the compliance figure used across Green Star, NABERS, ASRS, and most procurement schemes.
Biogenic carbon — the carbon a tree absorbs from the atmosphere as it grows and holds in its fibre. It stays stored in the timber for as long as the timber stays in service.
Land use change (LULUC) — emissions from changes in forest land use. Because we use certified timber, this is effectively zero.
Our numbers
When our timber is cited in a carbon assessment, you'll likely see one of two numbers. They're both real and they're both correct. But they measure different things.
471.60 kg CO₂e/m³ (fossil)
This is the fossil carbon figure: the emissions from fossil fuels to manufacture 1m3 of the product, from forest through to our factory gate. This is the number reported under most procurement schemes, and the number to use in compliance calculations.
−1,193.51 kg CO₂e/m³ (net)
This is the full picture: fossil emissions minus the biogenic carbon stored in the timber. That storage is so large it pulls the whole number negative: our Blackbutt stores more than double the carbon it costs to make. Biogenic carbon storage is unique to bio-based materials, and it's what separates timber from almost everything else on a specification sheet.
Our fossil carbon hotspot
The single largest contributor to our fossil carbon is the adhesive, at around 60%. It's a water-based nano-resin, manufactured in Australia, formaldehyde-free and Red List compliant. Lower-carbon adhesive options exist, but they don't meet our material health requirements or support the service life we're designing for.
That's a deliberate trade-off. Not an oversight.
Biogenic carbon (and why most reports don't highlight it).
The verified net carbon figure for our Blackbutt is −1,193.51 kg CO₂e/m³. Every cubic metre that goes into a building takes nearly 1.2 tonnes of CO₂ with it. It's a number only bio-based materials can claim.
For most compliance frameworks, biogenic carbon sits outside the headline submission figure. That's the convention, and we work within it. The exception worth noting is the Living Building Challenge, which counts biogenic storage in its Net Positive Carbon imperative.
International accounting rules (ISO 14067, EN 15804+A2) require biogenic carbon to be reported but treat it cautiously, and reasonably so. Storage is only real if the timber stays in service and the source forest is genuinely sustainable. Our raw material is FSC or PEFC-certified, and the product is engineered for long service life. Both conditions are met.
The net figure is real, it's verified, and for anyone thinking beyond the compliance column, it's part of the complete picture.
What our PCF doesn't capture (but we think you should know).
A Product Carbon Footprint measures emissions inside a defined boundary. It can't tell you everything that matters about how a material is made or what it replaces. Five things sit outside the PCF that we think specifiers should weigh.
1. Raw material upcycling
Our veneers come from a lower-grade log stream, material that would otherwise move to wood chips, pulp, or short-life energy recovery. Our demand doesn't drive primary harvesting. It provides a higher-value pathway for timber the industry typically discounts.
In most forestry systems, only a narrow band of material reaches architectural use. By making engineered hardwood from the material that usually gets sidelined, we expand what can be specified from the same harvested resource, without adding pressure to primary forests.
The PCF doesn't model this benefit, but it's part of how we think about the material.
The future of timber begins with upcycling →
2. Certified origin
Our timber comes from FSC and PEFC-certified sources, verified through an independently audited chain of custody. That certification does two things relevant here: it supports the biogenic carbon claims above (Green Star requires certified sources for stored-carbon recognition), and it provides legal assurance of origin under Australia's illegal logging legislation.
Certification doesn't appear in the carbon number. But it underpins whether the number can be trusted.
Chain of Custody →
3. Material health
The PCF measures carbon. It doesn't measure what the product puts into the air of the building it goes into.
Our timber holds a Declare Label, an ingredient transparency declaration that identifies every material input, checked against the Living Future Institute's Red List of worst-in-class chemicals. No added formaldehydes. VOC emissions well below recognised green building thresholds.
For projects where indoor air quality is a priority, this matters separately from the carbon story.
Declare Label + Ingredient Transparency →
4. Reuse and circular pathways
The PCF reports on the manufacturing stage. It doesn't account for what the product can do after first use.
Our material is solid throughout, not surface-applied. It can be cut, shaped, machined, and reworked just like solid timber which makes it suited to reuse, remanufacture, and remachining at the end of first life. That's a pathway that composite or surface-finished materials can't easily access.
We're also piloting a Circular Timber Stewardship Program for our ReFramed glazing system, including take-back and remanufacture where feasible.
5. Substitution
The PCF tells you what it costs to make our timber in carbon terms. It doesn't tell you what you're comparing it to. We think one of the most powerful questions when it comes to specifications isn't "is this timber low-carbon?" but "what would otherwise go here?".
Take internal glazing frames as one example. On a material basis, Australian primary aluminium sits at around 16 kg CO₂e/kg. Our Blackbutt is 0.5 kg CO₂e/kg. That’s 32 times lower per kilogram. For applications where timber can do the same job, that's not a marginal gap.
Download the PCF
Rather read the full report?
Download Product Carbon Footprint — Blackbutt May 2026
If you have questions about applying these figures in a specific rating scheme or procurement process, do not hesitate to get in touch.