BE-ST (Built Environment – Smarter Transformation) officially relaunched its Innovation Campus at the start of September, by welcoming stakeholders to see the newly equipped Mass Timber Centre of Excellence and Scotland’s newly retrofitted National Retrofit Centre.
The event, held at BE-ST’s Innovation Campus in Hamilton, marked the first event in the BE-ST Fest 2025 Fringe Festival and brought together industry leaders, academics, policymakers, and innovators to showcase the Campus’s new facilities, explore opportunities for collaboration, and mark the start of the next chapter for BE-ST.
Supported by Scottish Funding Council and host institution Edinburgh Napier University, the Mass Timber Centre of Excellence now houses £1.5million of newly acquired, state-of-the-art mass timber post-processing equipment and fully integrated extraction system. This will complement existing capabilities and further enhance production capacity, precision finishing, and health and safety processes.
The Centre provides the UK construction sector with access to advanced timber manufacturing capabilities, including the largest commercially available CNC machine in the UK and full-scale production of cross laminated timber (CLT), nail laminated timber (NLT), and glulam. The facility will be capable of an annual output of around 8,000m³ when operated at full capacity, on a single shift. It will play a pivotal role in strengthening local supply chains, creating jobs, and reducing carbon emissions by accelerating the adoption of UK-grown mass timber solutions. With the UK currently importing around 73,000m³ of mass timber each year, the Centre aims to unlock significant economic, environmental, and social benefits by onshoring the production and use of mass timber products to Scotland.
“The Mass Timber Centre of Excellence opens up huge opportunities for the construction sector,” said Sam Hart, Associate Director of Manufacturing and Housing at BE-ST. “By investing in mass timber, we are not just advancing low carbon approaches to construction, we are also investing in economic growth, creating jobs, and providing solutions to some key challenges facing the built environment sector.”
BE-ST also celebrated the reopening of Scotland’s National Retrofit Centre (SNRC), a facility dedicated to scaling retrofit solutions and skills across the UK, following the completion of the Centre’s own deep retrofit. The retrofit project was delivered by Clark Contracts and part-funded through Phase 1 of Scotland’s Public Sector Heat Decarbonisation Fund. Edinburgh Napier University, administrator of BE-ST, was awarded £1.2million through the fund, which is delivered by Salix on behalf of the Scottish Government.
Caitriona Jordan, Associate Director of Retrofit and Energy Efficiency, added: “Scotland’s National Retrofit Centre is the hub for developing retrofit skills and knowledge, both through hands-on training and by serving as a living case study. Our mission is to coordinate and support Scotland’s journey to decarbonise its existing buildings.
Together, the two facilities are positioned to address some of the most urgent challenges facing the UK: the climate emergency, the housing crisis, rising energy costs, and the need to deliver high-quality, sustainable homes and buildings at scale, while also creating new economic and skills opportunities for Scotland’s built environment and construction supply chain.
