Our first stop was the new Ecococon factory located just outside Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, which is a short and pleasant train journey from Vienna. This factory is the second production facility for this established straw panel company, with the first located in Lithuania. The goal for the newer site is to establish a fully mechanized, replicable factory prototype that can simultaneously accelerate production and reduce labor costs. While still under construction, we were able to see the almost completely robotic assembly line, including a proprietary machine Ecococon’s team has designed to optimize the strand orientation and compression of the straw inside their panels. (We were asked not to photograph this machine for obvious reasons.)

While the robotic machinery was not yet operational, we were able to admire the thoughtful construction of the factory itself, fully designed as a Passive House building. In keeping with the low-upfront-carbon emissions philosophy of this company, all-wood, tree-like structural posts were used to support the gabled factory roof. The windows are PHI-certified wood-framed windows by Smartwin, made locally in Slovakia by one of Smartwin’s cooperative partners. The shape, size, and height of the building was clearly optimized to the footprint of the equipment it needed to house. A small office area with a modest showroom, bathroom, and employee break room adjoins the open-plan factory floor and provides room for the business operations, along with the small staff that will be required to provide quality control and maintenance, once the factory is operational. 

Bjorn was kind enough to extend our tour to visit a number of projects built using the Ecococon panels. We visited two completed homes, an artist studio complex, plus a ten-home residential subdivision, still under construction. Their designs varied from rustic to contemporary, with exterior finishes ranging from natural clay to brick veneer, providing a spectrum of options to either celebrate and expose the straw panels, or disguise them completely.

At dinner that evening we were introduced to the visionary investor helping Ecococon to scale its production capacity and incorporate robotics into its manufacturing process. It was not surprising that she is a techie herself, with a background in security software. She shared her excitement for supporting local innovation, particularly as it aligned with her family’s ambitions to foster scalable, local manufacturing with great ecological outcomes.  This goal resonated with all of us, especially those of us from places like California, where our high labor costs have previously prevented Ecococon from setting up shop to produce these innovative panels.

The Lignoloc origination story was equally compelling. As CEO Christian Beck tells it, he was not particularly inspired to take over the family business until he tugged on the innovation thread that clearly runs through the history of this company. The opportunity to develop new products and lead the family business finally captured his interest. He assembled a team and brought in R&D collaborators to drive the development of the collated wooden nail product, including a custom-designed pneumatic gun. I’d seen the original headless prototypes in 2017, and now this product line has been expanded to include an option with heads, with both in an array of widths and lengths. Our group was shown these newer wooden nails with heads, plus a product being used at a nearby massive timber manufacturer, where glue-free, cross-laminated timber panels are being produced using the Lignoloc nails (appropriately known as LNLT for Lignoloc Nail Laminated Timber).  Before our departure, we were given time to drink Lignoloc-inspired beer and ‘shoot wood’ using the Lignoloc nail guns. As you can imagine, extraction was difficult…

These fully integrated HVAC boxes remain frustratingly absent from our U.S. product market. This year Pichler showed off their new-ish enhancement: integrated PV + battery storage, all neatly packaged in a compact add-on to their original well packaged unit. This is the kit I have been drooling over on past visits to Europe over the last fifteen years, and I am still wondering why this product type has remained so elusive to our U.S. product supply chain. What building professional wouldn’t want all their HVAC needs delivered in a preassembled, fully integrated and compact box? This is prefabricated HVAC, or i-HVAC— with the i standing for integrated—and I’d LOVE to see an entrepreneurial American either develop a similar product, or establish a distribution partnership with Pichler (which Pichler’s CEO is very open to.) Alternatively, why not take a cue from Beck Fasteners and perhaps manufacture these elegant units under a local brand name? 

The expo featured a number of other intriguing products, including a new option for air leakage testing, plus a window-frame integrated ventilation unit designed especially for retrofits. However, samples from this Passivhaus candy shop left a frustratingly bittersweet aftertaste. The tradeshow was loaded with building product candy I cannot access—despite living and working in the perceived center of the tech universe. I continue to be puzzled by how slow the U.S. construction market has been to adopt and develop products required for high performance buildings, particularly HVAC products. This continues to hamper our ability to optimize cost and performance—especially for retrofits, where we are least able to rely on the envelope to do the heavy load-reduction lifting.