Australia could build a nationally competitive engineered bamboo industry that adds $906 million to gross domestic product and creates around 1,840 additional jobs by 2035, according to new economic modelling released today.
The Bamboo Society of Australia unveiled the Deloitte Access Economics analysis on World Bamboo Day, alongside a new industry roadmap titled Bamboo Breakthrough.
The roadmap outlines a pathway for Australia to establish a locally grown and manufactured engineered bamboo sector that could supplement traditional construction materials.
According to Jennifer Snyders, President of the Bamboo Society of Australia, the country already has many of the ingredients needed to support such an industry.
“We have the land, the climate and the demand for high volume, low-emission construction materials,” she said.
What is missing, she noted, is the local infrastructure to connect bamboo cultivation with manufacturing and construction demand.
The Deloitte Access Economics modelling outlines a high-growth scenario in which Australia develops domestic bamboo production and processing capacity, paired with rising demand for engineered bamboo products across the construction sector.
Snyders said the figures illustrate the scale of the opportunity: “This analysis shows the size of the prize: a market opportunity of up to $847 million per year by 2035 that creates jobs and cuts emissions.”
To reach that scale, the modelling suggests Australia would need to produce 250,000 cubic metres of engineered bamboo annually, enough material for the equivalent of roughly 16,600 homes.
At that level of output, the industry could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 430,000 tonnes by 2035, a figure the analysis compares to removing around 170,000 cars from Australian roads.
It would also represent about 1.5 per cent of the built environment’s upfront carbon emissions.
Beyond the emissions and economic benefits, the analysis points to flow-on opportunities in housing supply, regional employment, agricultural diversification and advanced manufacturing, provided the right production capacity, standards and markets can be developed domestically.
Also released on World Bamboo Day, Standards Australia’s Bamboo Standards Report examines the international standards landscape for engineered bamboo and identifies areas that require further work in the Australian context.
Taken together, the economic modelling, the standards report and the industry roadmap are intended to lay the groundwork for engineered bamboo to become a mainstream building material in Australia.
Snyders said the roadmap gives industry and government a concrete set of steps to follow, from scaling up cultivation through to meeting construction specifications.
She emphasised that the opportunity extends beyond simply bringing in overseas products.
“Australia can build a new industry from the ground up, rather than simply importing a finished building product,” she said.
She added that the potential benefits would be shared across the supply chain, from growers and regional communities to manufacturers and builders, at a time when Australia faces growing pressure to expand housing and infrastructure while lowering the carbon footprint of new construction.
With the economic case now established and a roadmap toward appropriate standards in place, the Bamboo Society of Australia says the next step is turning the analysis into action.
Industry stakeholders, government bodies and manufacturers will need to collaborate to translate the modelling into real production capacity, supply chains and market uptake over the coming decade.
The organisations behind today’s releases say the combination of demonstrated economic opportunity, a clear standards pathway and an industry roadmap positions Australia to move from potential to implementation in building a homegrown engineered bamboo sector.
