Created by Jeremy Mansfield
First published on Sourceable here
Not many people have realised we have moved on from tiki-bar bamboo poles. Engineered bamboo is now a construction product. It can be used in mainstream building, not just furniture, screens and holiday-deck aesthetics.
That perception gap is one reason the industry has been easy to postpone. This week makes postponement harder.
The Bamboo Society of Australia has released its Bamboo Breakthrough roadmap, aloAll Postsngside economic analysis by Deloitte Access Economics and a Standards Australia report on bamboo. Between them, they cover the three things the industry has been missing: a plan, a market case, and a standards conversation.
I was a co-author of the roadmap, and I am proud to have played a part in getting it here. Over two years ago, I promised the BSA president I would help make a local industry happen. After more than a decade working with mass engineered timber buildings, I have seen how much work goes into getting a product specified and built. Certification, design pathways and procurement take as long as the product itself if you leave them late. Bamboo needed someone to help map that path while the crop and the manufacturing case were still being built.
That promise is kept in this sense: we now have evidence of how to do it. We still haven’t built the industry. Those are different things.
A material that can be harvested annually once mature is useful in the next 10 years, not only in some distant net-zero year. Engineered bamboo is the standout fast-growing biobased material in that group: close enough to hardwood in performance, and fast enough to matter this decade. Housing supply is tight, timber imports are rising, and climate policy still heavily favours slower systems. Growing the bamboo is not enough. We need the capability to process, specify and build with it.
What the numbers now say
Deloitte modelled a high-growth scenario, not a forecast. Under that scenario, Australia’s engineered bamboo industry could become an $847 million annual market by 2035, contribute about $906 million to GDP, and support around 1,840 jobs. Producing 250,000 cubic metres a year would provide enough material for the equivalent of around 16,600 homes, with around 430,000 tonnes of CO₂e avoided in 2035 through material substitution.
That is what becomes possible if plantations, processing, certification and demand move together.
The Taxonomy Gap
Sustainable finance taxonomies are now moving from design into use. That is fine as far as it goes. The problem is what they left out.
Fast-growing biobased materials were not built into the criteria. Bamboo sits awkwardly between agriculture and forestry, so it was easy to miss. Banks are now writing their own frameworks as well. If finance only implements what is already on the list, capital will keep flowing to the systems those taxonomies already recognise. A perennial crop that can become a building product will stay in the “interesting but later” box.
The timber lesson
Mass engineered timber still has something to teach us. It was clear the material could perform well before we had local standards and design pathways to use it in many key building types. Without existing local bamboo standards, the hard work has been mapping the gaps early: testing, certification, CodeMark, NCC pathways, and getting a new product accepted on site.
That is why the Standards Australia report matters as much as the economics. Markets move when specifiers and certifiers can say yes. A common understanding of performance characteristics is what turns that yes into confidence at scale.
This is not an argument against planting trees. Bamboo can complement timber, particularly where stronger structural grades are needed and where domestic supply is under pressure from imports. We need both fast and slow systems. The problem is the imbalance.
Lessons from international standards and bodies
Standards Australia’s Bamboo Preliminary Research Report maps how other countries made the shift. China, India, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Colombia show the same pattern: coordinated government action, adoption of international standards, and real market demand moved bamboo from a traditional material to an engineered product used in buildings and infrastructure.
The report is also clear about what Australia still lacks: recognised local standards, limited NCC pathways, and little formal engagement with the International Organization for Standardization or the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization. It points to ISO Technical Committee 165, Timber structures, as the working group that already holds the structural bamboo work. Australia is not a member of INBAR. Joining INBAR, the Standards Australia report says, would open access to global expertise and a clearer view of the market.
The Bamboo Breakthrough roadmap makes the same point. The standards conversation has to be international as well as local, or we will keep importing product without importing the system that makes it usable.
Neil Savery, former CEO of the Australian Building Codes Board and representing the International Code Council Evaluation Service, put the proposition cleanly: “We already know how to turn bamboo into a high-performance building product. Other countries have been doing so for years, achieved through establishing trust anchors that provide building practitioners with confidence as to the performance of the material; demonstrating compliance with relevant Code requirements; and enabling transparency, verifiability and traceability of product claims.”
Jennifer Snyders, president of the Bamboo Society of Australia, made the next step just as plain: “We have the economic case, a pathway to the standards we need and a roadmap for industry. Now we need to turn this bamboo breakthrough into an Australian industry.”
The roadmap can be downloaded here: https://bamboobreakthrough.org.au/
What backing bamboo means
If the launch is going to travel beyond the room, three things need to happen.
First, policy and finance have to recognise bamboo as a perennial agricultural crop and a construction material. Don’t force it into a forestry template that doesn’t fit. And don’t ignore it because it sits outside sustainable finance taxonomies that haven’t recognised it.
Second, build plantations and processing together. A crop without a mill is a brochure. A mill without a crop is a stranded asset.
Third, we need early projects. Demonstration buildings, procurement and willing clients, designers and builders can do more in the next two years than another decade of polite interest.
The next 10 years matter more than a distant 2050 promise. Fast-growing biobased materials are among the few options that can meet that timetable. I work in sustainable construction because embodied carbon will not fall if we keep waiting for slower systems to mature. This is one way we can move sooner.
Bamboo Breakthrough just punched through. The time has come to back bamboo.
By Jeremy Mansfield OAM, Mansfield Advisory Pty Ltd
