As an ethical & socially responsible business, we are proud to announce the plantation of 90 new ironwood tree seedlings as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility program in partnership with FNPF.
This new wave of seedlings plantation is the result of YOUR trust in Kaltimber’s product quality and CSR commitment to protecting Kalimantan’s endangered forest.
This is indeed achieved thanks to your decking and flooring orders through our engagement to replant 50 Ulin trees for every 950 sqm of fully processed decking and/or flooring purchased at Kaltimber.
The Friends of the National Parks Foundation (FNPF) has been working in Kalimantan, Borneo since 1997. We successfully started to work with the FNPF in 2021 to replant 50 ironwood trees, known as Eusideroxylon zwageri, as a first trial, and many other donations have been done since then. FNPF runs habitat restoration projects in Kalimantan’s Tanjung Puting National Park, the largest national park in southeast Asia, and in Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve. Their projects have been recognized globally by organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme, the Whitley Fund for Nature and the Rainforest Action Network.
Ironwood trees are extremely slow growing trees, making them extremely rare, hence so precious. Indeed, its extremely slow growth rate at less than 0.5mm a year results in a highly dense wood that was logged way too extensively. As tree planter Redansyah pointed out for Mongabay, an “ironwood is planted in 2004 and its diameter isn’t even 5 centimetres [2 inches],” he said, pointing to an ulin seedling planted almost two decades ago that had not yet grown 2 metres (6.6 feet) high.
Prior to the national park’s extension in 1984, Pesalat was an area of traditional slash and burn farming. When FNPF project began, the area was severely degraded. Vast areas of forest in the national park and the reserve have disappeared, through farming, logging, mining, and forest fires.
Since 2000, their focus has primarily been on reforestation in the dry areas, which were once dominated by Ironwood trees. They have planted over 50 hectares, initially planting 400 saplings per HA, and then planting additional saplings almost every day in order to increase the density and diversity of the trees, and to replace any dead saplings with new ones.
Salvaging old wood from disused structures is what we do. And every time we visit Kalimantan, we are amazed to see how much wood has been used for many applications such as roads, houses, bridges, or even floating toilets!
As much as recycling this wood full of history is a business opportunity for Kaltimber, our inner wish would be that it would not exist. Since it does, better do it well and on top of manufacturing products celebrated by world renowned architects and private owners alike, we are proud to extend our commitment to replant trees that we wish will be fully grown in a few centuries.
This commitment from Kaltimber is your chance to do good for the planet. Not only by purchasing recycled quality construction material, but also to help in replanting a very rare tree.