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FINAL CONFERENCE IN MANILA

Presentations, showcase and round table discussions
2nd December 2016 in Manila, Philippines

For further information, send email to cocoboards@bfh.ch

 
From the lab to the market.  

Currently the Philippines have a deficit of several millions of housing units, which affects the low-income earners most. There is therefore an urgent need to propose effective strategies for the delivering of affordable housing.

Cheaper and easy available building materials could be made of coconut husk. The coconut industry in the Philippines produces in fact 15 billion pieces of husk per year, which are usually dumped or burnt

The combination of coconut husk with environmental-friendly binders such as tannin-based adhesives represent a suitable, affordable and sustainable solution for the manufacturing of innovative fibreboards.

The central objective of the project is to develop and to implement an environmentally sound technology for the manufacturing of affordable building materials made of coconut husk and bonded with tannin-based adhesive.

The project is divided into 3 stages:

 

 

 

Stage 1 – Technology development

• Analysis of the raw material characteristics, availability, current usage and flow
• Fibreboard mixture design and pressing technology development at the laboratory scale

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stage 2 – Up-scaling

• Scaling-up of the production process together with local companies
• Demo-house prototyping and customer acceptance testing in the local market
• Sustainability analysis of the product and development of possible future scenarios in the coconut husk usage and flows

 

 

 

 

 

Stage 3 – Implementation and Communication

• Development of a production/sales/distribution concept in the Philippine market within the set-up of local social enterprises
• Dissemination of the developed technology and results in the scientific community and among stakeholders