Dr Anthony Greer, co-founder and director of corporate strategy at TALO, an offsite timber frame housing specialist, answers Project Scotland’s questions about the firm’s growth strategy and plans to address the housing crisis
Q) What, in your opinion, should we be doing to address the housing crisis in the UK and Scotland?
A) We are simply not building enough homes and to the right standard.
The UK housing debate too often centres on how many homes are built or needed each year. Targets dominate policy discussions, planning reform and industry commentary. Yet an equally important question receives far less attention – what outcomes should we be delivering through the homes we build?
Looking at the broader picture, it is clear that housebuilding must be redefined around outcomes, such as energy performance, build quality, speed of delivery and long-term affordability for the occupier.
There is a fundamental issue – fuel poverty in modern housing. No new home should leave its occupants struggling to afford energy bills – whether social or private housing, owned or rented. Addressing this needs a significant shift in mindset. And yet traditional housebuilding methods remain largely unchanged, despite rising material costs, skills shortages, the drive to net zero, evolving regulations, and growing expectations for better energy building performance.
Residential developers and social housing providers are facing mounting challenges – construction costs have increased significantly, financing costs and interest rates remain high, and planning delays persist. When projects take longer to complete, the financial burden increases through extended borrowing periods and greater exposure to risk. And that makes it really difficult to unlock many sites for development.
These pressures create a cycle where higher quality, faster delivery and lower cost are often seen as mutually exclusive goals – that improving quality inevitably increases cost, or that building faster must compromise quality.
I firmly believe these assumptions must be challenged. And this is exactly what the housing sector in Scotland and the UK needs to be focusing on.
Q) What’s the history of TALO and how important is the Scottish market to the business?
A) TALO was established in 2018 to bring proven timber offsite technology to the UK, which has been used to build thousands of homes in Finland and Norway for the last 30 years. We have a clear mission – to eradicate fuel poverty by building better homes.
Manufactured offsite, the TALO timber panelised system is delivered to site complete with higher levels of insulation than building regulations require, triple glazing, external finishes, and plaster boarding pre-installed.
We have continued to innovate as part of our mission to redefine housebuilding for better outcomes. Our package of solutions now extends beyond our highly insulated superstructure system to include a lightweight foundation system to reduce cost and waste to landfill; a factory installed cladding system to further reduce time on site, and a whole house energy strategy – solar battery package, MVHR and electric underfloor heating.
These solutions combine to reduce build programmes by 50% and achieve a much higher level of air tightness to improve energy efficiency beyond the new Future Homes Standard and Passivhaus energy standards.
Scotland is an important market for TALO and has huge potential because of the urgent need for more affordable homes. It is the base for our new head of commercial, Jonathan Riley, and we have plans for our second factory to be located in Scotland with the aim of creating local jobs to build local housing. This would include a TALO Academy to train multi-skilled teams to accelerate the delivery of ultra-low energy, low rise housing, particularly social and affordable housing.
Q) How would you define TALO’s approach to housebuilding?
A) We are absolutely focused on achieving better outcomes with our wider vision to eliminate fuel poverty.
One of the key lessons from housebuilding in the Nordic countries is the importance of treating the home as a complete system rather than a collection of individual components.
Energy performance does not come from insulation or the installation of renewables alone. It depends on the integration and quality of the building fabric, ventilation if there is a high level of air tightness, energy generation, and build quality. It then becomes possible to achieve exceptional levels of energy performance that are difficult to reach through fragmented design decisions – and most importantly, without a cost premium. This is the basis for our housing solutions which radically reduce or remove energy bills.
We are combining robust offsite manufacturing processes, an intelligent and more holistic approach to whole house design, and a much greater level of collaboration – between the client, contractor, timber superstructure provider, architects and supply chain partners.
Q) What are the benefits of a dry timber approach?
A) One of the reasons our advanced timber superstructure system delivers such high-quality housing, is that we have complete control of the timber – from the forest and sawmill in Finland, to offsite manufacturing and to site. This is an entirely dry process at each stage – which we believe is fundamental to delivering ultra-low or zero energy housing.
If high quality, slow grown Nordic timber is protected from the weather at every stage, it never gets wet and therefore never has to dry out over time.
Wet timber means movement – twisting and cracking – which then leads to snagging and heat loss once a house has been built. When you have dry timber combined with precision-engineered offsite manufacturing and intelligent design, you can radically reduce air permeability for a higher degree of thermal efficiency – and at no cost premium.
This fabric first approach must start in the forest and follow through the product lifecycle and including how the structure is installed on site. The impact of this approach on the quality of new low-rise housing cannot be underestimated.
The primary driver for this approach is climate. With winter temperatures in the Nordics that can fall below -50°C rising to 30+°C in the summer, homes must achieve extremely high thermal performance to ensure year-round comfort and energy efficiency. As a result, housebuilding in Finland and Norway prioritises fabric performance and airtightness through timber offsite housing technology.
Q) What are the social impacts of properties with superior energy efficient features?
A) The UK urgently needs to rethink how we build new homes. Too many people are living in properties with poor thermal performance and high energy bills.
We want to tackle fuel poverty, improve housing quality and reduce the environmental impact of new homes. New housing should not simply meet current standards – homes, regardless of tenure, should be designed with energy performance, low maintenance and occupant wellbeing at the core.
Encouragingly, consumer expectations are changing. Residents and homebuyers are increasingly aware of energy performance, renewables and running costs. As energy prices continue to fluctuate and climate concerns grow, demand for higher-performing homes will only increase.
If the industry can align around those outcomes, we have the opportunity not only to build more homes, but to build better homes that genuinely improve people’s lives. And most importantly, ensure future generations will never face fuel poverty again.
Q) What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for the business in the coming years?
A) Firstly, we have to change perceptions. There needs to be renewed focus on outcomes – raising the bar for build quality and the energy efficiency of new homes.
The new Future Homes Standard is very welcome, but in our view doesn’t go far enough. TALO is already building homes that exceed the new requirements and Passivhaus energy standards. As an industry, we need to go further.
Secondly, we need to work with visionary housing associations, local authorities, and developers who share our mission to eradicate fuel poverty. This demands a change of mindset – earlier decision making, a greater level of collaboration from project inception and the willingness to take a more holistic view of the design of low-rise housing.
The highly insulated superstructure should not be considered in isolation if we are to optimise the benefits of offsite manufacturing and energy performance.
But… once developers and housing providers see at first hand the quality of the homes we are delivering and at no cost premium, their enthusiasm to join us on this journey is clear to see and is a massive opportunity for our business. Once a project has been delivered with us, our customers do not want to go back to traditional construction, so our levels of repeat business are around 90%. This has given us a strong and growing pipeline for this year, 2027 and beyond, which is really exciting.
We currently manufacture the TALO system in Finland and have funding in place to open our first factory within 12 months which will be followed a second factory, which we hope will be located in Scotland. Our strategy is to use a regional factory model that is repeatable in any geographical region of the UK, which allows us to build homes closer to our major customers and where the homes are needed.
This approach reduces risk and capital cost, allows us to scale whilst bringing inward investment, regional employment and a reduced carbon footprint.
The opportunities for TALO in Scotland and the UK are enormous.
