Timber Trail. Greenply’s green drive at Tizit

Winter has just receded in Tizit, a tribal hamlet in Mon District of Nagaland. A familiar fragrance lingers in the spring air redolent of the Eucalyptus trees standing tall here. Neem and Khokan trees too densely dot the area. There are around 15 lakh of them, spread over 3,300 acres.

All the trees are owned by Tizit’s residents who got the saplings a few years back from the interior infrastructure company Greenply Industries. Once the timber is ready for harvest it is sold back to Greenply at a profit which goes to the villagers on whose land the tree grew. The timber is in turn used to make products like plywood, block board, decorative veneers and MDF.

For wood-based industries, which are increasingly facing uncomfortable questions on forest losses from eco-warrior customers, sustainability is a big challenge. At Tizit, Greenply shows how it is rising to the challenge through sustainable wood production and processing by relying only on plantation timber.

Scattered amid the tall trees are stumps, barely a foot tall that are sprouting tender green shoots. Amit Yadav, the Commercial Head of Greenply’s Tizit unit says the timber is harvested in such a manner that stumps are left for the tree to regenerate. “This way, we aren’t causing deforestation,” he says.

Mr Manoj Tulsian, JMD and CEO, Greenply Industries

Greenply’s Joint Managing Director and CEO Manoj Tulsian describes how the company deliberately set up its manufacturing unit in Tizit near the timber belt. “Sourcing timber from Nagaland helps us to reduce fuel expenditure for transportation and also helps reduce pollution in the surrounding areas. The timber sourced from here is of high quality as we focus on plantations of local species which suit the climate of the area.”

Growth partnerships

He says the company conducts plantation activities on degraded private lands, which are not suitable for commercial crops. “We provide them with free technical assistance from the nursery to the post-harvest stage through frequent training sessions. This has helped the farmers in switching to commercial planting from subsistence planting and we are seeing impactful results at all our sites,” Tulsian adds. Greenply has so far planted more than 20 million saplings across its manufacturing locations.

The plywood industry, Tulsian says, relies heavily on the real estate sector as a primary demand driver. “After a protracted period of stagnation, the real estate market is now undergoing a substantial upswing and a full recovery, which is benefiting the plywood industry,” he says, with optimism. In FY22, the company recorded a consolidated revenue of ₹1,536 crore. This was a jump from ₹1,165.3 crore in the financial year before that, shrugging off the setbacks of the pandemic when “things came to a standstill” in Tulsian’s words.

“Change in consumer preferences for larger and better-quality homes, increased demand for renovation and refurbishment, and a growing preference for ready-made furniture have benefitted the plywood segment at large and especially the organised players like us,” he says.

According to Tulsian the industry is increasingly getting organised, benefitting players like Greenply. “Particularly with the expansion of GST, the plywood industry is quickly becoming organised, as it has reduced pricing discrepancies between the organised and unorganised sectors and increased consumer preference for branded goods. It is also thriving as a result of the country’s rising urbanisation, which is encouraged by government attempts to build infrastructure and establish furniture hubs in the country,” he adds.

Plying innovation

On Greenply’s new products and goals, he says it is the first company to introduce E-0 plywood in the country. The factory in Tizit has a separate unit that manufactures this particular grade of plywood, which emits almost no formaldehyde. Exposure to high levels of formaldehyde on furniture can cause some people to have breathing problems or irritation of the eyes, nose, throat, or skin.

Greenply has also recently diversified into the MDF segment manufacturing its first MDF board at its Vadodara unit. “We are also the first company in the wood panel industry to introduce a premium range of plywood products through our Club portfolio and pioneered the concept of lifetime warranty in plywood. We also introduced 4 Press Technology and Penta 5 Tech in the manufacturing process to offer defect-free products to its consumers,” he adds.

The writer travelled to Nagaland as a guest of Greenply