Could Hempcrete Finally Enter Australia's Building Code?

Hemp Homes Australia has already proven hemp-lime can be built, approved and lived in here in WA. The Senate's recommendations matter because the next challenge is scale: making hemp straightforward enough to specify across ordinary Australian housing and public projects.

Margaret River Hemp Co  |  August 2026  |  Part 3 of the Australia's Hemp Opportunity series

We have already been building hemp homes in WA

Hemp Homes Australia has been building hemp homes in Western Australia for years. The business is led by Gary Rogers, a registered builder and carpenter with more than 30 years of hands-on building experience and more than two decades working in the Australian hemp industry.

Hemp Homes Australia built Western Australia's first hemp home and has since delivered a number of architecturally designed hemp projects across the South West. That experience matters because the national conversation can sometimes make hemp construction sound as though it is waiting for permission to begin.

It isn't. Hemp-lime homes can already be designed, approved and built in Australia. The challenge is that the pathway can still be more complicated than it needs to be, particularly when each project has to establish evidence, approvals and confidence that conventional systems already have built into the market.

Indica Hemp House: proof that hemp can deliver

One of our clearest examples is Indica Hemp House in Wilyabrup. Built by Hemp Homes Australia using locally processed hemp, Indica is not a concept home or a research prototype. It is a finished, functioning luxury accommodation property that demonstrates what hemp-lime can look like when it is treated as a serious building system.

In 2024, the project won six Master Builders WA South West Awards: Best Country Home South West, Best Contract Home in its price category, Excellence in Alternative Finishes, Best Alternative Construction Home, Excellence in External Finishes, and Supervisor of the Year for Gary Rogers.

Those awards matter because they recognise more than the novelty of building with hemp. They recognise workmanship, finish quality, construction delivery and the ability of an alternative material to sit comfortably inside a high-quality contemporary home.

Inside Indica Hemp House: textured hemp-lime walls, natural light and everyday liveability.

So why does National Construction Code recognition still matter?

Because there is a big difference between a material being possible to use and a material being easy to specify repeatedly.

The 2026 Senate inquiry into Australia's industrial hemp industry has put that distinction firmly on the national agenda. Of its 14 recommendations, four deal directly with hemp-based construction: standards, fire testing, carbon measurement and formal recognition in the National Construction Code.

A national pathway for testing and standardisation could turn hemp-lime from a project-by-project solution into a repeatable building system.

First: what exactly is hempcrete?

Hempcrete - often more accurately described as hemp-lime - is generally made by combining the woody inner part of the hemp stem, known as hurd, with a lime-based binder and water.

Despite the name, hempcrete is not usually a direct structural replacement for reinforced concrete. It is commonly used around a structural frame as wall infill and insulation. Its appeal can include thermal performance, acoustic performance, moisture management and the ability to carry plant-based carbon into a durable building material.

The Senate inquiry identifies construction as one of the most immediate growth opportunities for the Australian hemp industry, with potential applications including hemp-lime walls, insulation, wall panels and other manufactured products.

The problem isn't permission. It is repeatability.

The Senate report makes an important point: hempcrete can already be used in Australian construction. What Australia lacks is an overarching national standard specifically covering hemp-based systems.

In practice, projects can rely on alternative solutions, performance-based assessments and project-specific evidence. That is workable, and our own builds prove it. But it is not the easiest pathway for mainstream volume.

A highly motivated homeowner may be prepared to work through extra questions. A volume housing developer, public housing program, insurer or national builder is far more likely to choose a system that already has recognised specifications, test data and familiar approval pathways.

That is why standards are not a technical issue sitting at the edge of the hemp industry. Standards are market infrastructure.

A standard gives everyone a common language

Good building standards do more than approve products. They establish expectations. They give manufacturers something to manufacture towards, designers criteria to specify against, laboratories something to test, builders installation requirements, certifiers a clearer assessment pathway and insurers a more consistent understanding of risk.

Recommendation 9 therefore matters: the committee recommends that the Australian Building Codes Board develop a standard under the Building Code of Australia supporting hemp-based products in construction.

That is not the same as saying hempcrete has now been added to the Code. It has not. It is a recommendation for what should happen next. But it shifts the conversation from asking every project to solve the same problem alone towards creating a recognised national pathway.

Fire performance needs evidence, not assumptions

Fire performance is particularly important in Australia. Any emerging building system seeking a place in Australian homes needs credible evidence about how it behaves under fire conditions.

Recommendation 10 calls for formal testing to establish fire ratings for hemp-based construction products. We think that is exactly the right approach. Different hemp building systems use different binders, densities, wall thicknesses, renders, linings and construction methods. Their performance should be measured according to recognised tests, not reduced to a single marketing claim.

The strongest argument for hemp construction is not that people should take its performance on faith. It is that we should test it properly and publish the results.

The same applies to carbon

Hemp grows quickly and captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it produces biomass. When that biomass becomes a durable building product, some of that biogenic carbon can remain stored in the building for years or decades.

But the climate impact of a finished wall cannot be calculated from crop growth alone. A credible assessment also needs to consider farming inputs, crop yield, harvesting, transport, processing, binder production, manufacturing energy, construction, product lifespan and end-of-life.

That is why Recommendation 11 calls for formal measurement of the carbon-carrying capacity of hemp-based construction products. Better Australian data would allow architects, governments, developers and carbon-conscious customers to compare products on evidence rather than competing headline numbers.

Recognition is useful. Volume is the real opportunity.

A single hemp home is fantastic. An award-winning hemp home is even better. But one house at a time will not create the level of demand needed to support a large Australian fibre crop, regional processing, manufacturing investment and lower-cost building systems.

If construction is going to become a genuine end market for Australian hemp, we need to think in terms of volume.

Projects like Indica prove the concept. The bigger opportunity is translating that proof into repeatable products and building systems for housing developments, social housing, prefabricated homes and commercial projects.

Not every hemp product will suit every building, nor should it. The goal is not to force hemp into projects simply because it is hemp. The goal is to identify where it performs well, prove that performance, and make the successful systems easy enough to specify repeatedly.

The Code can remove friction. Repeat specification is what creates a market large enough to matter to growers, processors and manufacturers.

Why volume matters to farmers

Building codes can feel a long way from the paddock. They are not.

Every successful hemp building system ultimately creates demand for agricultural material. If an architect specifies a hemp wall system, somebody needs to manufacture it. The manufacturer needs processed hurd. The processor needs harvested stems. The grower needs a contract.

But that chain becomes much more powerful when the specification is repeated across a development, a prefabricated housing program or a government procurement contract. A recognised construction system can create a repeatable end market, and that end market creates demand through the entire value chain.

This is the market-pull model we discussed in Part 2. Standards help create certainty, but volume is what gives growers and processors confidence to invest.

What we have learned from building in Margaret River

For us, hemp construction is not theoretical. Gary and the Hemp Homes Australia team have spent years turning hemp-lime from an idea into real homes in Western Australia.

That work has made one thing very clear: the material alone is not enough. A good building needs a good system. The mix matters. The binder matters. The render matters. Wall thickness matters. Detailing matters. Workmanship matters.

Our hemp sauna is another example. Its hemp-lime wall uses a certified lime binder. The exterior is protected with a compatible natural render that still allows vapour movement. Inside, the hemp wall sits behind the sauna's foil and cavity system before the cedar lining is installed.

Each layer has a job. Each interface matters. Standards can help turn that accumulated practical knowledge into repeatable construction methods that other builders, certifiers and designers can work with confidently.

Hemp shouldn't get a free pass

Hemp-based building products should not enter the National Construction Code simply because hemp has an environmental story. They should earn their place because the products have been tested and the systems work.

• If a product claims a particular fire rating, prove it.
• If it claims thermal performance, measure it.
• If it claims carbon storage, calculate it properly.
• If it claims durability, demonstrate it.

That level of scrutiny is not a threat to the hemp industry. It is how the industry grows up. The goal is to move from 'hempcrete is an interesting alternative material' to 'here is the specification, here is the test data, here is the installation method and here is the performance'.

Four recommendations that could reduce the friction

Taken together, Recommendations 9 to 12 provide a practical roadmap for making hemp-based construction easier to assess and use:

• Recommendation 9: develop an Australian building standard supporting hemp-based construction products.
• Recommendation 10: support formal fire testing for hemp-based construction products.
• Recommendation 11: formally measure the carbon-carrying capacity of hemp-based construction products.
• Recommendation 12: establish a best-practice standardisation process and recognise hempcrete in the National Construction Code.

They are still recommendations. Government, regulators, researchers and industry now need to decide what happens with them. But the significance is hard to miss: the Senate is no longer asking whether hemp construction exists. It is asking what needs to happen for it to become easier to use at scale.

Recognition is the starting line, not the finish line

Formal recognition in the National Construction Code would be a major step forward, but it should not be the industry's final measure of success.

The real breakthrough comes after recognition: when architects specify hemp systems without treating them as an experiment; when volume builders can repeat them across projects; when insurers and certifiers understand the pathway; when prefabricated products are manufactured to consistent standards; when government procurement can compare hemp against other materials on verified performance; and when builders around Australia are trained to install the systems properly.

That is how a standard becomes a market.

And that market needs to be large enough to consume hemp at meaningful volume. Housing developments. Social and community housing. Government buildings. Prefabricated homes. Insulation. Commercial projects. These are the kinds of applications that could create consistent demand rather than one-off showcases.

Indica Hemp House proves what can be achieved one project at a time. The next challenge is turning that proof into systems that can be used one hundred projects at a time.

From award-winning homes to ordinary Australian buildings

Australia has spent a long time proving that hemp has possibilities. Hemp Homes Australia has spent years proving that those possibilities can become real homes.

The next phase has to be about scale: clear standards, reliable testing, better data, consistent products, trained builders, confident certifiers, insurable projects and repeat procurement.

Getting hempcrete recognised in the National Construction Code would help remove a major layer of friction. But the bigger goal is what comes afterwards.

That is when hemp stops being a niche construction story and starts becoming part of the Australian building industry.

Australia's Hemp Opportunity

This article is Part 3 of our series exploring the findings of the Australian Senate's 2026 inquiry into the opportunities for the development of a hemp industry in Australia.

Read the full Senate inquiry report  |  Hemp Homes Australia  |  Indica Hemp House  |  National Construction Code

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