Mayor Southgate said she was delighted Hamilton had been chosen as the base for an innovative technology that addressed both an environmental issue by reducing waste to landfill and a building supply issue by turning that waste into a certified, safe and low carbon construction board.
saveBOARD Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Paul Charteris said the factory started producing saleable product on 21 November 2021 and since 10 January it has been operating 24 hours a day, three days per week producing 400 boards a day and diverting up to 4,000 tonnes of waste from landfill annually. The company plans to ramp the factory up to six days per week as demand increases. The factory has created new jobs with more expected as the project grows.
Mr Charteris said New Zealand builders can now replace plywood, particle board and plaster board, with saveBOARD’s low carbon, environmentally sustainable construction boards made from packaging waste such as used beverage cartons, soft plastics and coffee cups. saveBOARD has funding and support from industry leaders Freightways, Tetra Pak and Closed Loop Solutions which will provide recycled material as well as transport and logistics solutions.
The saveBOARD production process uses heat and compression to bond materials, eliminating the need for glues or other chemical additives. saveBOARD is made with zero water, zero glues, zero chemicals and has zero VOC emissions or formaldehydes. The product provides up to a 90% reduction in carbon emissions compared with other construction boards. saveBOARD has put in systems in place to recover offcuts and end of life boards to be remanufactured into new board products, providing a zero waste to landfill solution.
The technology to turn waste into high performance building material was developed in the United States where it has been widely used for more than a decade. The product was chosen by Tesla as the membrane roof substrate for its 200,000m2 gigafactory in Nevada. The Tesla roof equates to upcycling 2,000 tonnes of composite plastics and saves 336,000 kgs of embodied CO2 compared to using plywood.
Mr Charteris said saveBOARD had received a A$1.74 million grant from the Australian and New South Wales Governments towards setting up a A$5 million facility in New South Wales that is scheduled to be in production this year.
More information about saveBOARD is available at www.saveboard.nz
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