Bamboo can find a medley of new application areas that have a tremendous market opportunity, potential as well as value addition. Bamboo products could find application in high absorption and mass consumption industries like roads and housing because of its attributes of high strength and low weight. The use for bamboo grids for reinforcement of roads is an innovative application, which has not been used elsewhere in the world. Bamboo makes for excellent construction material and Ecuador has used bamboo extensively and successfully in construction of homes. Bamboo offers a low-cost but strong housing solution. Bamboo briquettes are also a new application as far as India is concerned, but they are widely used in other bamboo growing countries. Another market that could be tapped is the niche market of bamboo shoots. It is a highly popular delicacy across the world and its consumption in India needs to be promoted. Bamboo’s capacity for regeneration makes it an eminently suitable replacement for wood and it is perhaps why bamboo is referred to as “tomorrow’s timber.”
The last 15 years has seen a mushrooming of the variety of commercially available bamboo products. As well as traditional products, there is now successful commercial production of bamboo flooring, laminated furniture, building panels (similar to timber based plywood, chipboard or MDF), high quality yarn and fabrics, activated carbon, bamboo extracts and so forth. These are no longer novelty items but are successfully competing in the marketplace and gaining market share. These recent developments have created new opportunities for leveraging bamboo as a basis for rural industrialization and poverty reduction. In particular, the emergence of new higher added-value processing increases the sector’s potential economic impact, especially in poor rural communities, compared to traditional lower value processing industries.
Unfortunately not all of the bamboo plant can be used to such effect. Premium processing needs premium parts of the bamboo (typically the middle lower part of large culms). So modern bamboo industries need a mix of different businesses producing a variety of products, with premium bamboo parts going to premium uses (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture), mid quality parts (e.g. upper mid section) going to medium value added processing (e.g. blinds, mats, chopsticks) and the leftovers, sawdust and other processing ‘waste’ being used in the bulk processing industries such as paper, charcoal or chipboard.
But the use of bamboo in these industries would be possible only if it makes commercial sense. Unless it makes business sense to replace existing materials with bamboo, the crossover would not be possible. To make bamboo and its products economically viable, the intervention of a number of facilitators and stakeholders is required.
From a production perspective, it is possible to divide the sector into distinct sub sectors, each of which can exist on a standalone basis or in combination with the others:
1. Handicrafts: characterized by high levels of semi-skilled and skilled manual processing of relatively small volumes of bamboo culms.
2. Bamboo shoots: essentially a high value agricultural crop that can either be grown primarily for shoots or in parallel with the production of culms.
3. Industrial processing: semi-mechanized and mechanized processing of comparatively large volumes of bamboo culms. Industrial processing industries can be further divided according to the value of the processing and grade of material used:
i. Premium processing (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture, Ply board)
ii. Medium value processing (e.g. Incense sticks, Blinds)
iii. Low value and bulk processing (e.g. charcoal, paper & pulp)
4. Unprocessed culms: supplied to the local construction industry or used for domestic household applications.
From a production perspective, it is possible to divide the sector into distinct sub sectors, each of which can exist on a standalone basis or in combination with the others:
1. Handicrafts: characterized by high levels of semi-skilled and skilled manual processing of relatively small volumes of bamboo culms.
2. Bamboo shoots: essentially a high value agricultural crop that can either be grown primarily for shoots or in parallel with the production of culms.
3. Industrial processing: semi-mechanized and mechanized processing of comparatively large volumes of bamboo culms. Industrial processing industries can be further divided according to the value of the processing and grade of material used:
i. Premium processing (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture, Ply board)
ii. Medium value processing (e.g. Incense sticks, Blinds)
iii. Low value and bulk processing (e.g. charcoal, paper & pulp)
4. Unprocessed culms: supplied to the local construction industry or used for domestic household applications.
