Mercer Mass Timber LLC, the Spokane Valley-based manufacturer of cross-laminated timber panels, has launched a mass timber installation division, says Brian Merwin, the company’s senior vice president. 

The new division, dubbed Mercer Mass Timber Construction Services, offers on-site installation services and project consulting for clients seeking guidance and support. 

With the addition of the new division, Mercer Mass Timber has positioned itself to provide end-to-end services through engineering, manufacturing, and construction, enabling faster completion times and greater project efficiency, Merwin contends. 

Nate Foster, project manager for Mercer Mass Timber, says the biggest goal in providing installation services is to bridge the gap with many first-time mass timber users and reduce hesitations that they might have when thinking about switching from constructing a conventional wood-frame, steel, or concrete structure. 

“What we want to do is offer some expertise in this space and try to educate the different labor markets,” Foster says. 

The construction services division consists of a core team of seven people that helps with project management and site supervision. Mercer Mass Timber has begun deploying teams to projects across the country, Merwin says. 

Mercer Mass Timber is a subsidiary of Vancouver, British Columbia-based Mercer International Inc., a global producer of market pulp and solid wood products with mills in Canada, Germany, and Australia. The Spokane Valley cross-laminated timber plant located at 19202 E. Garland is the company’s first U.S. factory and its first foray into the mass timber industry. 

As previously reported by the Journal of Business, Mercer acquired the 253,000-square-foot facility from Katerra Inc. in 2021 for $50 million after Katerra filed for bankruptcy. 

Since taking over, Mercer Mass Timber has grown its workforce by about 30%, bringing its staff to about 80 employees, and recently completed a $27 million, 10,000-square-foot mass timber expansion of the facility, Merwin says. 

Initially, Mercer Mass Timber only offered manufacturing and engineering and design services to its customers. However, after fielding several requests for help on installation, leaders at the company recognized there was a need in the market to assist construction crews. 

Foster says people who are hired to build mass timber projects often are ironworkers or frame carpenters with no experience or knowledge in working with mass timber. Offering expertise and guidance to these workers will further educate this segment of the workforce, Foster says. 

“We’re dealing with a completely different product type—wood versus steel. But there’s a striking number of similarities between just the installation process between those two,” Foster says. “We definitely want to partner with different companies in the region and educate them on our products so that we’re able to work with them down the road.”