Wood construction: growing market, more 33 percent

The wood building market is growing. The usual annual report on wood construction released by Assolegno, the trade association of FederlegnoArredo, showed that 2021 was an extremely positive year. Total sales approached 1.8 billion euros, registering a strong 33 percent increase over 2020.

Positive numbers that have led Italy to become the third largest producer of wooden housing solutions after Germany and Sweden and confirm the vitality of the sector. In fact, more than 3,400 new housing units have been built, with a trend toward works characterized by increasing engineering complexity.

The report’s findings are based on the annual survey of FederlegnoArredo’s Assolegno member companies, which operate in the wood-framed building construction sector, involving the major market players in the statistical analysis and achieving a representativeness of about 80 percent of the turnover generated. The regions where the largest number of realizations are concentrated are Lombardy (first in terms of number of companies with 70 firms) Trentino, Veneto, Emilia Romagna and Marche; at the same time, the largest players are concentrated in the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano (with a weight of 34 percent on the sector’s production value).

“We record with satisfaction the consumer’s appreciation, which highlights the competitiveness of our construction technologies“, explains Assolegno of FederlegnoArredo, a national association that represents the sector and promotes the rational use of wood material as a structural element.

“Approximately 1 in 13 homes is built in green building with wood, reaching today a percentage of the total building permits that is more than 7.3 percent. The built value per square meter and the average size of constructions are also increasing, data that reflect the ability of wood construction to address even increasingly complex constructions. Thus, a positive trend is developing that also involves the construction of multi-story buildings and that, for most works, embraces within our urban circuit, construction complexes having 4-5 floors above ground. This building typology, understood as a new urban forest, can certainly contribute to a sustainable development of the building segment, actually succeeding in being a carbon storehouse and mitigating the effects of climate change“.