Planning to emerge as a fully-integrated furniture manufacturer across value chain, Timbor Home Ltd will plant fast-growing hard wood, furniture-grade trees in Gujarat on 2,500 acres for in-house requirements to make itself independent of imports and also export wood to other countries.
Timbor Home, which raised Rs 23 crore through an IPO earlier this year, had successfully run a pilot project of planting 30,000 saplings of biotech-generated timber wood on 60 acres of leased land in Kheda district of Gujarat.
It used drip irrigation technology in doing so over the last two years, Mr Anant Maloo, Chairman and Managing Director, told reporters here on Friday.
The forestry pilot project, part of the company's backward integration, was also lauded by the State's forest department and it is sufficient for the company's captive requirements at present.
The company now plans to expand the plantation of Paulownia plant over 2,500 acres, leased from the government and private parties, in Bharuch district in the next three years.
It would make Timbor Home India's only fully-integrated furniture manufacturer across the value chain from forestry to manufacturing to retailing through its own and franchisee stores that now number six and 110, respectively, across 18 states and 72 cities.
The hard wood species, cultivated extensively across the US, China, Israel, New Zealand and Australia, besides India, is a fast growing versatile plant, whose trees start giving yield in five to six years.
The per acre yield of Paulownia plant is 600 to 800 trees, each yielding 20 to 25 cubic feet of hard wood. Timbor Home's current requirement of hard wood is six to eight lakh cubic feet, 70 per cent of which is imported. Plantation for captive use will cut down hard wood prices by about 40% and the company will even export hard wood, he said.
India's current furniture market size is about Rs 70,000 crore, out of which only 20% is in the organized sector, with leading players being Godrej and StyleSpa, both manufacturers, and @home and Home Town, both importers, Mr Maloo said. The industry is growing at a CAGR of 30 per cent for the last three years.
Timbor Home's turnover in 2010-11 was Rs 79 crore with a PAT of Rs 2.8 crore.