Do you feel lucky plank? Meet the new 'bulletproof' wood
During lab tests, a gas gun fired a bullet-like projectile at thin pieces of wood, including an early version of the company's product.
Mr Lau suggests that the product could have military applications, such as in battlefield shelters, but admits they "haven't tried dropping bombs on it".
In the race to decarbonise construction, materials such as concrete – associated with high greenhouse gas emissions – are coming under ever-greater scrutiny.
Wood-based construction, proponents say, can actually help in the fight against climate change by storing large amounts of carbon long-term.
But natural timber is not always strong enough for certain applications and it can degrade when exposed to moisture or wood-gobbling insects.
That's where engineered wood products come in. They promise to be significantly stronger and more resilient – reliable enough, even, to form the structural frames of skyscrapers. The construction industry is increasingly pushing wood to new limits.
"You can almost massage the wood so you're squeezing air and imperfections out," explains Mr Lau as he describes the process of treating timber with chemicals to remove lignin, a polymer found in wood, and then compressing it extremely firmly to reduce its volume by around 80%.
