HempBuild Magazine

*Otetto Homes staff (L-R) Elliot Marsh, architect, with Co-Founders Amanda Marsh, Chris Ball and Harrison Marsh. Photo by Gary Parker courtesy Otetto Homes*

By Jean Lotus

An Australian builder that casts hempcrete into prefabricated timber-frame panels has received AUD $2 million ($1.4M USD) from the New South Wales Government to build what it describes as the country's first large-scale hemp panel plant, in Toormina, near Coffs Harbour, about 325 miles north up the coast from Sydney.

The funding comes from the state's Agriculture Industries Innovation and Growth Program. It is a co-contribution grant, so the company puts up a matching $2 million. The money will go to plant and manufacturing equipment, the company said.

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The business has three parts. A Sydney construction company is the base. Living Canvas makes wall, floor and roof cassettes from locally grown hemp and a lime binder, and can panelize an architect's existing plans. Otetto sells three prefab home designs built on the panels, with a fourth on the way, and has a display home open for walk-throughs. The company says the panels are carbon negative over the life of a building and are rated for bushfire zones.

"Essentially, we're a frame and truss manufacturer that has hemp already cast into the walls," Co-founder Chris Ball of Otteto told HempBuild Mag.

The panels are designed to be installed by carpenters. "The reason that we went to panels is familiarity," Ball said. "No unique trades."

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*Artist rendition of Otetto Homes’s “Mulloway House” one of three designs available. Photo courtesy Otetto Homes*

The display home went up in four days, including the roof, with three days of crane lifts. "We thought that the lifting part would be the bottleneck, but we were the bottleneck installing," Ball said. The company now targets two days for a three-bedroom house: floors on day one, walls and roof on day two.

Cast-in-place hempcrete, by contrast, takes six to eight weeks to install and another six to eight weeks to cure, Ball said. He estimates 200 to 400 hemp homes have been built in Australia, about 60 percent of them by owner-builders.

Wall panels are 280 mm thick (11 inches) and rated R4.25 (Australian metric R-value). Roof panels use a different mix with no sand and less compression, reaching R6 at the same thickness. Ball said roofs are "where we see the most return on investment."
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*A hempcrete-insulated roof panel is lowered by crane onto the building site. Photo by Gary Parker courtesy Otetto Homes*

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Equipment from Europe

The company's current production line was built with an engineer using improvised equipment, including water-filled ballast tanks for weight. The grant will buy production equipment from Swedish manufacturer Randek, including flipping "butterfly" framing tables. Ball's team will tour Randek-built factories in England, Germany, France, Switzerland and Sweden in the coming weeks.

"Why are we reinventing the wheel for this manufacturing equipment when it already exists on a larger scale, and now we've got the money to go and do it?" Ball said.

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Hurd as a Byproduct

Ball said New South Wales leads the country's hemp industry, with Victoria behind on growing climate and financial incentives. Australian growers have so far grown hemp mainly for hurd. Some are now moving toward fiber for export, which would make hurd a byproduct. One supplier expects to produce enough hurd from its fiber deals for about 2,500 homes a year.

Ball said hurd currently costs the company around $1,500 (AUD) a ton and he expects that to fall to a few hundred dollars a ton within five years. He noted that imported Chinese hurd, where it is treated as waste, is already cheaper than local supply. Growers, he said, "need to find the sweet spot of use case for the whole plant."

*Living Canvas Co-Founders (L-R) Harrison Marsh and Chris Ball inspect the walls of the display home. Photo by Gary Parker courtesy Otetto Homes*

The company plans a second facility co-located with that grower, sized for about 1,000 homes, or 500,000 square meters of panels, a year. Ball called it a two-to-three-year project, separate from the current grant.

Policy Tailwinds

Australia has a target of 1.2 million new homes in roughly four and a half years. Ball said the country's Homeowners Warranty insurance, which caps the value of a builder's open jobs at any one time, rewards faster builds. A national Certificate III in modern methods of construction is due next year, and the company has been invited to help with curriculum at a planned $50 million MMC training institute set to begin construction in mid-2027.

Next Steps

The company has applied for a $2.5 million testing grant covering fire and other certifications needed for wider approvals, including commercial work. "Once we unlock those tests, the sky's the limit of the applications," Ball said.

Its panels have been announced for a basketball court in Brewarrina, roughly 10 homes' worth of panels, or about 20 percent of the first plant's capacity. Ball said the company also has about $30 million in developing, uncommitted work.

*A local drops by to observe the construction project. Photo by Gary Parker courtesy Otetto Homes*

Ball said wider adoption depends on bringing the payback period on the higher upfront cost, helped by energy savings and green home loans, in line with rooftop solar. "If we can get it under eight years, I think that the game's over."