Search This Blog

Saturday 20 June 2009

New Panda friendly veneer finish for executive furniture



Environmentally friendly Bamboo veneers launched by one of our most popular manufacturers of receptions, boardroom tables, and executive desks make a lot of sense.

We have recently introduced two Bamboo veneer finishes to provide an environmentally attractive alternative to timber veneer. Bamboo is not a tree but a species of fast-growing grass: you can harvest up to a third of the bamboo stems in a plantation without affecting the size of the forest, and regular harvesting actually stimulates growth. Bamboo also generates up to 35% more oxygen than an equivalent stand of trees, and is the fastest-growing canopy for the regreening of degraded areas.

These factors, allied to its delicate and distinctive appearance, make bamboo an environmentally, and visually attractive choice. Its great durability ensures it is also very practical.

We are offering bamboo as a finish option on all our Sven veneered office furniture, in two shades: Natural and Caramel. The caramel colour is achieved by pressure steaming - no chemicals or colouring are used.

The bamboo used to create our veneers is Moso bamboo, commonly called giant bamboo (or more precisely, ‘Phyllostachys Pubescens'). This grows naturally in vast primeval forests and also in managed plantations. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on earth. The Moso bamboo species needs 5 years to grow to adult height and to be hard enough to be processed. Within a few months new shoots will have already grown to a height of 12 to 15 metres. Giant bamboo can grow at 30-50cm per day during the growing season, and reach a final height of up to 30 metres, with a stem diameter of up to 35cm or more. A sixty foot tree cut for timber takes 60 years to replace. A sixty foot bamboo cut for market takes 59 days to replace.

In addition to generating much more oxygen than equivalent tree cover, bamboo is also an excellent carbon store. A study by Jules Janssen of the Technical University Eindhoven in the Netherlands, in 2000 states that bamboo, planted in large groves, can store four times the carbon dioxide of a stand of trees of similar size.

Harvesting Moso bamboo does not cause problems for pandas (which eat bamboo shoots). Both the giant and small pandas live in the central mountain ranges of central China. Pandas go to places where the lower species of bamboo are easily accessible. The high Moso bamboo has no leaf growth on the first 5 metres of the stem and is therefore not a source of food for the panda.


Everyone's happy!

1 comment:

  1. splendid furniture for corporate sector, I must say the designs and the furniture its self was too good.

    ReplyDelete