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Important
FAQS About Tangaloa Prime Hardwood |
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| Q: |
What
is Tangaloa Prime hardwood? |
| A: |
Tangaloa Prime
hardwood is a new natural alternative wood
resource that does not come from, nor involve,
any rainforests or any other old-growth
environments. Tangaloa Prime hardwood is not a
processed wood product. The wood properties of
Tangaloa make it an excellent replacement for
endangered mahogany. |
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| Q: |
What can
Tangaloa Prime hardwood be used for? |
| A: |
Tangaloa, a
stable high-quality wood, can replace any wood
that is currently in use. It is equal to or
better than any old-growth woods. Sawdust from
milling and off-cuts can be used to maufacture
many common processed wood products, such as
plywood and wallboards. With its high fiber
content, it is an excellent pulp resource for
paper making. See Uses of Tangaloa. |
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| Q: |
Where
does Tangaloa Prime hardwood come from? |
| A: |
Tangaloa is
milled from senile (non-productive) coco palms (cocos
nucefera) that are found by the billions in old
or abandoned copra plantations. After 40-50
years, coco palms become senile and stop
producing coconuts, the source of copra. In
plantations that are operating, senile trees are
culled for replanting new trees or, as in the
case of abandoned plantations, simply left to
fall and rot in the fields. Specifically, the raw
resource of Tangaloa Prime wood is an
agricultural waste. |
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| Q: |
What is a
copra plantation? What is copra? |
| A: |
Copra
plantations are agricultural operations that
cultivate coco palms and harvest its nuts. The
meat of the nuts are dried to produce copra. High-fat
palm oil is rendered from copra and was once the
primary economy of most South Pacific island
nations and a large part of the economy of
Pacific Basin, African and Central American
nations. Palm oil was once the primary oil for
cooking. But, after the invention of low-fat
vegetable oils, the world market for palm oil
collapsed and has never recovered. |
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| Q: |
How are
the trees harvested? |
| A: |
In the field,
palm trees are cut, either by hand or small power
saws, and farm tractors are used to carry or drag
the logs to an existing roadside. There, they are
loaded into whatever truck is available, usually
one-ton flatbeds. Unlike natural forests, no
logging roads are necessary to bring logs to the
mill. Also, unlike the huge logs from
rainforests, the diameter of palm logs are small
and average about 12 inches and usually about 10-12
feet in length. All of this lends itself to small
equipment and minimal invasive impact on the
field and in the surrounding communities. |
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| Q: |
How is
Tangaloa Prime hardwood milled? |
| A: |
Tangaloa is
milled using only proprietary sawing and drying
techniques. No chemicals are used in the process.
In the drying process, most moisture is removed
thru natural drying, after which, off-cuts from
the milling and logging operation are used to
heat the kilns for finish drying. |
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| Q: |
Are any
chemicals used to produce Tangaloa Prime
hardwood? |
| A: |
None, whatsoever.
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| Q: |
How does
Tangaloa hardwood compare in pricing to
endangered mahogany? |
| A: |
Imported
endandangered mahogany is more expensive than
Tangaloa. Overall, the pricing of Tangaloa is in
the mid-range of hardwoods on the American market. |
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| Q: |
What role
did the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)
play? |
| A: |
After the world
market for palm oil collapsed and devastated the
economies of many nations dependent on the copra
trade, the FAO established a number of pilot
projects to determine the feasibility of milling
low-grade lumber for local use, to reduce the
costly imports of foreign lumber. The feasibility
tests were successful and established the
potential of coco palms as a viable wood resource.
However, the pilot projects never went beyond
proving the feasibilty and the pilot projects
ended. After the FAO left, most participating
countries abandoned any futher development. Years
later, Tangaloa envisioned the potential for
creating a new alternative wood resource of world
magnitude and developed new techniques and new
processes to mill high-quality wood products that
could eliminate the need for rainforest woods. |
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| Q: |
What is
the environmental impact of Tangaloa? |
| A: |
The environments
of copra plantations are man-made farming
operations. Therefore, harvesting coco palm
trunks for milling has no impact on any natural
environment. Coco palm trees are planted in rows,
with 10 to 20 meters between trees, leaving ample
room between trees for logging. As with any
farming operation, roads are part of any layout
and most locations abut existing main roads. In
abandoned plantations, some owners do crop
farming (mostly root crops) between the trees,
pasture livestock or, as in most cases, let the
ground lie fallow with dense overgrowth of weeds
and local grasses. Operating plantations tend to
keep the ground between trees cleared.
It is important to note that copra plantations
are not established in forest valleys, when they
do exist, and are mostly found from sea level
moving inland. As a matter of fact, since coconut
palms are some of the hardiest plants in the
world, they are frequently found in marginal
seaside lands. While Tangaloa's direct experience
cannot speak to the location of every copra
plantation in the world, one thing we believe to
be certain: there are no copra plantations in the
rainforests or any old-growth forests and
certainly none in the United States or any other
first-world nation.
As a genus, palms are in the top three of the
most plentiful in the world. Because they can be
grown in a wide range of geographic locations,
palms grown for Tangaloa wood can be established
in millions of acres of marginal lands, add to
the carbon-absorbtion capacity of Earth and
create unique production economies that sustain
its own raw resource. |
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| Q: |
What is
the economic impact of Tangaloa? |
| A: |
Copra
plantations are all located in countries most of
which are still mired in third-world economies.
Tangaloa wood represents a new economic base that
can literally pump "billions" of
dollars into the economic and industrial
vitalization sought by all these nations. With
few opportunities to develop a significant
exportable industrial product, these nations,
especially Pacific island nations, can now be
part of converting a common waste material into a
valuable resource.
All major milling of Tangaloa Prime hardwood will
take place in resource areas. Tangaloa
manufacturing and milling work is skilled and
technical and represents a major departure from
the use of native labor simply as unskilled
workers. Tangaloa is committed to supporting
training programs that will enhance skills,
safety procedures and quality standards.
For these countries, Tangaloa is a high-value
export product that will aid in the development
of stronger and more stable national and local
economies. Unlike copra, which largely uses
unskilled native labor, Tangaloa is a strong
stimulus to the development of higher local
skills, including that of technical and
management. The economic infrastructure is
strenghtened greatly by a high-value export
product and gives impetus to extended business
and economic development. This is industrial
development that is compatible with a local
environment, adds to the resource base and, best
of all, remains in the hands of locally-owned
companies that are locally-managed and locally-manned.
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| Q: |
What is
the world resource potential of Tangaloa wood? |
| A: |
Based on best
estimates of senile coco palms, 80 billion board
feet of lumber. This does not include by-products
of charcoal, firewood, plywood, pressboards and
paper pulp that can save an additional amount of
hundreds of billions of board feet of rainforests
woods. Given current world usage, we believe that
there is enough resource to supply Tangaloa wood
for all of the 21st century. In addition, there
is time for replacement trees to mature, twice
over, and to even expand the volume of planted
trees. |
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| Q: |
Who owns
Tangaloa Prime? |
| A: |
Tangaloa is a
minority-owned American eco-company. The
principals are native Hawaiians. |
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| Q: |
Is
Tangaloa seeking FSC certification? |
| A: |
NO. Tangaloa is
not a rainforests or old-growth product. Copra
plantations are not forests. Replanting of coco
palms is common. The culture of coco palms is
long established. It is renewable and expandable.
We reject the concept that companies must pay
certification organizations for certification.
This creates a dangerous bias and an appearance
of impropriety. We question the expertise of such
organizations and strongly reject the concept of
"sustainability". Afterall, how does
one replace an old-growth tree and the
surrounding ecology, after it is cut? As a matter
of fact, our position for “saving the
rainforests” is to stop all cutting of its
trees, whatever the process, rationale or system.
See A Simple
Rainforest Story. |
