GreenFlip

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.

Bamboo is an important means for generating income and improving the nutritional status of over 2 billion poor and disadvantaged people. It also provides the resource base for expanding Small and Medium Enterprise sector, providing employment and income generating opportunities to alleviate poverty. As such it constitutes an excellent entry point for local poverty alleviation initiatives.

Bamboo benefits rural-urban communities because it, (a) lends itself to agricultural approaches, (b) can be grown on non-agricultural land with annual harvests, (c) is easily processed by simple tools because it splits linearly, (d) bamboo based industrial development benefits the communities through its demand for human resources for growing, harvesting, transportation and processing of bamboo, (e) bamboo growth also works for land protection, soil quality improvements including improved water holding capacity, higher water capture and recharge benefiting agriculture and food security.

Bamboo remains an untapped avenue of economic growth in India. Its premise is that if the bamboo industry is pulled from its current status of a peripheral industry and pushed centre stage to being a prominent and profitable one it can successfully reverse economic downturns and bring an about-turn in the economic fortunes of the country. This would be particularly true for the Central Gondwana regions (CGR, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Western Uttar Pradesh) of the country where the resource is abundant and could be sustainably harvested in the years to come because of its amazingly quick propagation.

With its inherent properties, bamboo combines the best of forestry and agriculture. It holds the promise of rejuvenating watersheds and degraded lands, fortifying the country’s ecological security. What would distinguish growth in this sector is that it would directly benefit large sections of the rural poor, as they could be involved in the plantations, harvesting and primary processing bamboo units. The long-term relationship with this sector would help the economically disadvantaged sections escape the debilitating poverty trap. The development of the bamboo sector could follow in the footsteps of the dairy sector whose miraculous makeover has enabled 10.5 million farmer families earn a supplementary income of Rs 1,800 per month. This industry’s growth model has been successfully replicated in 22 states in the country and it spells hope for the bamboo sector.

The blueprint envisaged in meticulous detail here for the bamboo industry projects a growth in the sector from Rs 65 billion in 2003-2007 to Rs 240 billion in 2013-2017; a growth that would could even overtake that of the biggest bamboo economy of the world, China. The overarching model also projects an employment opportunity of 1.67 million in 2003-2007 that would climb sharply to 11 million in 2017. For example, the NER, whose economies have been trailing behind, the estimates are the bamboo sector can take their gross domestic product from Rs 230 billion in 2003 to Rs 290 billion in 2007 that would translate into a growth rate of 5 per cent. The bamboo industry would have a potential of employing a total of 1.88 million people in this region by 2017.

                        KEY CONCLUSIONS

§         The global market for bamboo products USD 7 billion + per annum*

§         Bamboo based enterprises can prove to be the key in rural economic development and mass employment creation

§         Governments and local administration must provide sustained and consistent support if the sector is to develop

§         The future of global bamboo markets looks strong, driven by growing demand for sustainable wood-replacement products

§         The commercialization of recent technological innovations has created significant new market opportunities for floor tiles, laminated furniture, panels and activated carbon.

§         New, higher value added processing greatly increases the potential for poor economic development compared to traditional lower value enterprises. For example, every tonne of bamboo used for producing bamboo boards has 5 times more pro-poor financial impact than if used for paper.

§         Markets in US, EU, Australia and Japan present significant opportunities for several high value products

§         The competitiveness of future bamboo enterprises will be largely driven by ‘value added utilization’ of the entire bamboo plant. 

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*Bamboo shoots, furniture, handicrafts, chopsticks, blinds, tiles, panels, charcoal and activated carbon. The value for unprocessed bamboo used in construction industry is excluded.