Bamboo Plywood Replaces Hardwood

MAASIN CITY, SOUTHERN LEYTE Here’s good news for our tree-loving Congressman Roger Mercado. “Plyboo” which is made from bamboo that’s pounded and cut into slats which are later flattened may replace plywood soon which is made from ordinary lumber.

A planer and sander smoothens the slats and the tiny gaps are filled with bamboo sawdust mixed with glue.

In its finished form bamboo plywood is an exotic wood panel that can be used for flooring, walls, ceilings or as furniture material.

And that’s just the beginning. When the slats are straightened and cut uniformly they produce bamboo chips as waste. These are not thrown away but cut into tiles. The tiles or chips are placed side by side, piece by piece, to make intricate paneling and flooring.

The best thing about this project is that it involves the whole barangay where the bamboo stands are harvested and the poles turned into slats.
About 45 village families in Barangay Santo Nino gather the poles and treat the slats.

The Chips and slats are then delivered to a bamboo treatment and processing facility operated by the Southern Leyte Employees Multi-Purpose Cooperative (SLEM) in Barangay Ibarra.

The coop buys the chips at 10 centavos each. The bamboo slats are bought at P100 to P150 per bundle depending on its length.

About 20,000 chips are produced each month. The cooperative sells the chips for P340 per 1,000 chips or 34 centavos per chip.

The bamboo plywood factory was started in July 2008 with a start-up funding of P418,000 from the Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program of the Department of Science and Technology.

According to Engineer Dominador Clavejo the DOST provincial director the cooperative needed technical intervention to improve its efficiency.
“Our assistance increased their output and improved the quality of their product,” he said.

“The cooperative then diversified into furniture-making and now has inquiries from foreign buyers but cannot cope with large orders as yet.
He said our main competitors are China and Taiwan.

A bamboo plywood manufacturer started at Subic in Zambales a few years back but had to close because the raw materials came from as far as Abra.

The cooperative venture in Southern Leyte, Zamora said, is about the seventh in the country. The others have closed shop and the Southern Leyte coop experiment is the only one left that is going strong.(By Mark L. Rimas)

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