Wood Stronger than Steel? It Could Be Coming Soon

As companies look for new ways to make wood a more effective building material, InventWood claims it has the latest and greatest.

Wood has always been one of the best building materials in the world, but that hasn’t stopped companies from trying to improve upon it. The latest to go at it is Maryland-based InventWood, which says it will be introducing a new type of wood called Superwood that it says is stronger and more ecologically sound that existing materials. 

“Traditionally, people who worked with wood tried to do things to protect the wood,” says InventWood CEO Alex Lau. “But no one had actually figured out how to make wood fundamentally stronger.”

The new building material involves “cooking” proprietary food industry chemicals into the wood at under 200 degrees Celsius, Lau says. Pressure is then applied but unlike existing pressure-treated wood, this method is focused on strength rather than durability. 

InventWood says the resulting material, much denser than natural wood, has a strength of 600 megapascals – measuring yield and tensile strength – versus about 400 megapascals for steel.

“This has the potential to be the default way to build,” Lau said in a recent interview. “You’ll build buildings that are lighter, that are cheaper to build, that are faster to build and safer to live in and that feel more comfortable.” While InventWood was founded back in 2016 it is just bringing Superwood to the marketplace this year. Lau declined to say how much it would cost but said it will be priced similarly to tropical hardwoods or walnut.

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