Innovation
The panel board industry is another major sector of the wood based industry; heavily dependent on the wood extracted from plantations grown under farm-forestry and agroforestry, e.g. Poplar and Eucalyptus. With dwindling wood resources on one hand and increasing demand for the wood based panel products on the other, attention is gaining momentum on the utilization of agro-residues and also recycling of wood waste for manufacture of panel products. Unlike plywood, Particle Board (PB) and Medium Density Fibre Board (MDF) provide enough scope for the substitution of wood by non-wood fibre resources.
While India’s forests continue to provide timber and fuel wood to its people, farm forestry and agroforestry have grown in importance over recent decades in India in providing the industrial wood for its economy, as well as in reducing pressure on available natural forests. The forests of India are under severe anthropogenic pressure due to growing demands for forest products. National Forest Policy, 1988, brought in policy shift towards using forests for conservation, which included preservation, maintenance, sustainable utilisation, restoration and enhancement of forest cover. This policy shift caused enhanced focus on ‘Trees Outside Forests’ (ToF) to reduce pressure on forests & to make the farm forestry plantations (part of ToF) productive as well as viable.
Exploring raw material option
The availability of Raw materials is getting volatile day by day for panel board and plywood industries. In the last couple of years, the infrastructure development and the growth in furniture industries has encouraged panel board industries to expand and establish more units. But at the same time infrequent availability of raw material resources developed has caused lack of processing equipment. There is an acute need of research for the development of availability of alternatives of raw material by industry players as well as academic institutions and industry-based Associations.
According to the statistics laid down by NPC (1990), at least 1.1 million tonnes of cotton stalk is available for industrial exploration. But presently, very little quantity of the said cotton stalk is actually being used. The world’s first MDF plant based on non-wood resource that functioned with an installed capacity of 39,000 TPA, received a widespread recognition and applaud; but not for long and the experts still believe that the success of this venture would have ensured- An emergence of scientifically proven and a novel technology for utilizing such an alternative.
Further, the cotton stalk has no commercial use at present as it is treated as an agriculture waste and, therefore, cotton stalks are easily available at economical price. As the fibre contents of cotton stalks are not inferior to the Baggase, the boards manufactured from cotton stalks are easily marketable. To verify the suitability of cotton stalks for MDF/HDF manufacturing, support would be required from Government bodies, R& D Institutes and skilled research teams. Scarcity of raw materials for manufacturing MDF & PB has been faced abundantly in India and exploring how options of raw materials could be put to manufacture such as cotton stalk which is abundantly available but in order to process further as one of the Raw material option.
Agro waste utilisation is new opportunities as huge amount of agro-waste (including post-harvest biomass) is generated worldwide. A country like India alone generates nearly 5 million tons of agro-waste (plant residues) per year. On the other hand large quantities of such agro wastes are burnt harming the environment and damaging the soils. Cotton Stalks, which is presently burnt as wastage and in the process cerate's pollution and smoke, would be fruitfully utilized and in fact it would be conversion of agro waste into wealth and, therefore, the unit would be the finest example of eco-friendly project. The rural community including farmers, farm labours and self-employed women would also be benefited as the sale of cotton stalk would generate additional income to them.