The Canadian fabricator Spearhead is renowned for collaborating with Studio Gang, Olson Kundig, and other offices that champion mass timber construction.
Colorado’s Aspen Art Museum designed by Shigeru Ban Architects, and the Temple of Light in Crawford Bay by Patkau Architects were both collaborations with Spearhead.
Today, Spearhead announced a new facility it is building just outside Nelson, British Columbia, adjacent to its existing operations base.
Leckie Studio, a Vancouver office, is the facility’s architect of record; Fast + Epp the engineer of record; and HR Pacific the general contractor.
The facility will support a new “highly specialized glulam manufacturing line” and “advanced CNC machining technology,” Spearhead shared in a statement.
The $60 million investment will open up new possibilities for “mass timber construction and advanced timber fabrication,” Spearhead said.
Renderings show the midrise facility with a concrete base, and the upper level clad in wooden slats.
A new Hundegger K2i CNC machine will be located inside the new facility, among other advanced manufacturing technologies.
Neue Holzbau, a complex timber structure global leader, is working with Spearhead to manufacture GSA glued-in-rod technology at the forthcoming facility.
Free form timber structures and other products sourced from the facility will go toward high-end residential and commercial construction projects.
The automated laminating systems will use locally-sourced softwoods, mixed-species, and hardwoods to make wood members up to 80 feet in length that come in straight, curved, and double-curved layups.
The facility will debut amid a shifting Canadian construction landscape and a major tariff war between Canada and the U.S. more broadly.
As part of Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s new Buy Canadian policy, the Canadian government is in the process of re-skilling 50,000 construction workers.
Canada’s new Build Canada Homes program uses 100 percent Canadian lumber, steel, aluminum, mass timber, and other domestically-manufactured materials.
Ravi Kahlon, Canadian Minister of Jobs and Economic Growth, said in a statement the new Spearhead facility fits within the Canadian government’s Look West strategy.
Part of Look West’s goal is to triple the amount of wood sourced from British Columbia in the next ten years, bolstering local supply chains.
Ledinek Engineering, a Slovenian wood processing technology manufacturer, will roll out the new facility’s glulam line in the next few months.
Machine equipment installation should begin this summer, and the facility is expected to be operational by 2027.