we can go coco

I just came from Romblon last 9/11 where I was invited by DTI to talk about dairy as part of their One Town, One Product (OTOP) activities. It happened that Dr. Justino Arboleda (or simply dr. Bo) was the other speaker on the coconut coir business. Though the surname may tell you that he comes from way up north he is actually a bicolano from guinobatan, a retired dean of the bicol university college of agriculture. He is an agricultural engineer by profession and studied at Tokyo University where he earned all his degrees, from his bachelor's up to his doctorate. In 1994 he set up JUBOKEN in guinobatan and specialized in exporting coconut coir.

He eventually realized that there is a huge world demand for coco coir that he then set up coco technologies corporation that uses coco net to stabilize slopes, prevent erosion and other soil projects. Another factor of his present success is memorandum circular #25 that instructs dpwh to use coco nets to stabilize soil in its projects. Among the countries that require an abundant supply of coco coir are china, japan, europe and usa. I consulted the statistics on coco coir exports at dti and everything checked out fine.

His company have already won all sorts of awards, from the BBC World Challenge 2005 to the Golden Shell.

He is so desperate about the supply of coir that he went as far as mindanao to secure supply agreements. He is even willing to partner with anyone who is willing and offers help for the needed equipment.

He estimates that in order to produce 1kg of coir and the accompanying 2kg of dust, a coir plant only needs to spend P6 in operating cost. If delivered to his plant in quezon city he is willing to pay P9/kg coir and we could sell the dust at P3/kg. That's a per unit sale of P15. He is willing to talk to us if we can provide some 18T/month. You can check out his site http://cocogreen.net/homepage.htm

Remember: coconut husks are farm wastes that are either burned or just thrown away. Tell, email me at glagamayo@yahoo.com or text (get my number from jet, dont post numbers here).