by Aurelio Pena
COCO COIR has been with us since the 1980’s and 1990’s but no one in government have showed any interest, ignoring its potentials in the global market as a dollar-earning commodity.
If you’re familiar with a typical coconut farm, every time coconuts are plucked off a coconut tree, farm workers remove the husks from the harvested nuts and toss them away into big growing piles. These big piles of brown coconut husks are a common sight in a coconut farm, an annoyance to many Filipino farmers who don’t know what to do with them.
But unknown to most farmers, the coconut husk is a source of coco coir, a natural fiber with so many industrial uses in China, Japan, US and Europe, especially in factories that make seat cushions for cars as well as furniture, beds and furnishings.
Sounds unbelievable, but this annoying “farm waste” can be worth millions of dollars to our coconut farmers in the Davao region, one of the country’s biggest producers and exporters of coconut products like copra and coconut oil.
It was against this background that the National Coco Coir Summit was held in Davao recently attended byhundreds of coconut farmers, coco coir producers and exporters, etc. from all over the country, finally giving them the attention they deserve.
During our early years as an import-export agent, we got inquiries from many investors and traders asking us to help look for suppliers of coco coir plant machinery and equipment in Taiwan.
Our small outfit at the time got several offers from Taiwanese firms which provided us with factory plans, specifications, production data, quotations, etc. for the production of both coco coir and coco peat, that sawdust-like waste that comes from processing husks into coco coir. The offers came with free installation by Taiwanese plant engineers, plant testing, engineering consulting, and even low-cost financing.
On the verge to closing a deal, we had a chance of arranging a meeting here with a Davao coco producer and a Taiwanese supplier of coco coir plant equipment at the Harana along Torres Street, Despite a visit by the Taiwanese at a plant site in Panacan, the deal collapsed because a government bank here wasn’t impressed by coco coir export potentials and the feasibility of a coco coir plant in Davao, so a loan application was rejected.
We still don’t know if the Development Bank of the Philippines and the Land Bank of the Philippines, both government banks, still have a very low regard for the potentials of coco coir and coco peat. The question is: can a coco coir plant generate enough revenue regularly to be able to pay off millions in loans?
Our Chinese contacts on mainland China a few years ago had been telling us that they needed 50 containers (40-foot vans) of coco coir every week. This was only one of the dozens of Chinese firms looking to buy coco coir from the Philippines. Most of the coco coir they buy come from India, Bangladesh and Indonesia which produce huge volumes of coco coir despite the fact they have fewer coconut trees than the Philippines.
What really surprises us is why it took so long for the government to focus its attention finally on this new industry.
We can only guess. Most coconut farmers and traders here are still very skeptical about the market for coco coir and aren’t impressed enough to gather together all their coconut husks and turn them into cash ….
(For comments, email us at : aureliopena2011@hotmail.com)
