New Factory at Tumut

3 April 1967 The Canberra Times

The first stage of Pyneboard's new building complex at Tumut, New South Wales is now complete.

It comprises a main particle board factory and warehouse, a boiler house and separate administration block.

Adjacent to one of Australia's largest soft-wood forests, the 53-acre site is approximately one mile south-west of Tumut on the Snowy Mountains Highway.

It was necessary to divert a natural watercourse so that a rail siding could be constructed to bring in equipment and materials. 

To create a level "bench" for the building, 70,000 cubic yards of earth had to be moved.

Sydney architects, Stafford, Moor and Farrington, were called upon to plan the building round the plant layout designed by the German engineering firm of Himmelheber.

It comprises a ground floor and four upper platform levels with provision for mounting Cyclone separates on the roof and housing hydraulic press equipment in a pit 26ft deep.

Construction is structural steel frame on concrete pad foundations, with bar and mesh reinforcing, and galvanised sheet steel cladding to walls and roof.

Portal frames in the warehouse area give a clear span of 176 feet. Fibreglass roof panels admit daylight to supplement light from windows.

Floors are concrete, with steel-trowelled monolithic finish.

All processing areas have natural ventilation, but air conditioning was required in the main electrical control room for the forming line on the first platform level.

The whole building complex is 122,400 sq. ft in area and the top of the roof-mounted Cyclones is 80 feet above ground level.