Century Plyboard has ventured into Gabon, SA and establishing a face veneer manufacturing facility there. They have incorporated their wholly owned subsidiary with the name of ‘Century Gabon’ for manufacturing and trading timber and timber products. Talking to a TV news channel Mr Sajjan Bhajanka, Chairman, Century Plyboard said, “We are setting up at Gabon with the incentive in GSEZ for manufacturing face veneer. It is very less investment in comparison to our total investment in the industry. It becomes necessity to be present at the place from where we can full fill the requirement of face veneer. We were procuring face veneer from Assam in the beginning, but after banning there it was being procured from Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Laos, etc. These countries have also banned it. We were facing constraints for availability of face veneer so we opted to invest in Gabon for our requirement of face veneer for plywood manufacturing.”
The new facility at Gabon will begin manufacturing in six months as the orders for machines have been placed and GSEZ authorities have issue the land to the company. “In first phase at least Rs 15 crore would be invested besides the cost of the land. There is no plan for manufacturing plywood at Gabon now and the face veneer produced will be exported to India and other countries,” he revealed.
“We also have units at Burma. But from where we are unable to fulfill our requirement of face veneer. Gabon has the availability of timber in plenty and that has been sustainably managed that do not affect environment. For the sustainable availability Gabon is perfect with their management and sustainable availability of timber. They have closed to issue of new license for face veneer unit and as per information Century Plywood is the last to whom the license has been issued,” he added.