At a ceremony Tuesday morning in St. Thomas, Element5 officially opened its new state-of-the-art glue-laminated production line and unveiled the expansion of its mass timber manufacturing facility in the city’s north end.

Element5 is the province’s first certified manufacturer of cross-laminated timber, and the expansion more than doubles the size of the plant from 130,000 square feet to over 350,000 square feet.

It will create 150 new jobs, increasing the company’s workforce to over 325 employees.

The expansion doubles the facility’s production capacity from 50,000 cubic meters annually to 100,000 cubic meters annually of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glued-laminated timber (Glulam) products.