FTMA & Carbon Warrior Takes on Carpentry Australia Expo
25th September 2025
By FTMA’s Kat Welsh
L-R: Julia Hall, Twenty Nine Ideas, Jake McArthur CEO Carpentry Australia, Kat Welsh Editor / Coms FTMA Australia.
This September, FTMA / Carbon Warrior ran a booth at the inaugural Carpentry Australia Expo 2025, held at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre on 17–18 September.
With a pulse on timber, prefabrication, and cross-trade collaboration, FTMA’s presence resonated across the show floor, and in conversations between carpenters, fabricators, and industry stakeholders.
Carpentry Australia put on an amazing line-up of presentations, and amongst looking at all sorts of areas of the chippy industry, also managed to highlight the importance of wellbeing – given that the construction industry has alarming statistics of mental unwellness.
Julia and I strongly put out the Carbon Warrior key messaging: timber’s performance, sustainability, and how prefabrication can strengthen carpentry outcomes. The “how good wood is” conversations were inspiring, reinforcing timber not just as material, but as an identity.
Particularly inspiring from our perspective, were young apprentice carpenters who knew exactly what we were talking about through Carbon Warrior, carbon storage, the biophilic principles of working / living with timber, and it being the future of environmental and housing targets for Australia.
What was interesting and a bit alarming were engineering students who had virtually no idea what we were talking about – BUT (big ‘but’!!), they were very keen to learn all the facts about carbon storage, the durability of timber in construction, the ability of timber in bushfire prone areas, and needless to say they were very happy to go back to Uni with an armful of Carbon Warrior resources for their lecturers and peers.
We took the opportunity to start gathering material for some Carbon Warrior and FTMA projects in the pipeline - all going towards the future profile for our sector, promoting the benefits of, yes you guessed, wood - and of course offsite pre-fab!!
Thank you to Jake McArthur, Nathan Quin, and all the team at Carpentry Australia for the opportunity to get Carbon Warrior’s narrative into the carpentry trade, to inspire new alliances, and to build stronger bridges between the suppliers, builders, and designers who shape Australia’s wood-based built environment.
And a massive thank you to Julia Hall for being a fantastic collaborator at Carbon Warrior’s booth, and binging her wealth of industry knowledge, connections, and advocacy.
