ECO Teak Scam?

[boomerangben]

I got a strange phone call yesterday from a company looking for investors in Eco Teak plantations. The deal is that pasture land is bought up and teak sapplings are planted. You buy the investment when the trees are 4 years old. Thinning takes place at eight years and the money made from that will "likely pay for the investment". Then at (and this is the good bit) the teak is harvested at 18 (yes one eight!) years, making you pots of money. When quizzed about the time line, it was explained that this was in the rain forest where trees grow really quickly. I politely said that I would have to do some research on this first, and he offered to send me some details in the post. I told him to save that tree for someone else.

So was I right, does teak have any value if harvested at 18 years?

 

[Ubergeekian]

I got a strange phone call yesterday from a company looking for investors ...

You don't need to say any more. On that basis alone, it's a scam.

 

[Poignard]

Heart-warming

How very kind of them to select you, a complete stranger, to share in their scheme. It really restores your faith in human nature.

 

[DownWest]

Reminds me of the jhoba bean con. You buy some land (in the desert, off them) they grow the beans and sell them, then split the huge profit. Catch one was that the quoted yealds were only obtainable in the lab. And if it all worked, the amount of beans would crash the market, so the price they listed would never be realised. You still got your bit of desert though ( if the deeds were straight.....)
A

 

[BrianH]

So was I right, does teak have any value if harvested at 18 years?

From what I have read that is a fairly typical growth period for plantation teak. Don't forget that much teak is cut for veneers and maturity is not an issue. Other less critical applications are for such things as poor quality garden furniture.

The best teak (Tectona Grandis) originally grew in the dry, hilly terrain of forests in Southeast Asia, all other locations where it is now found are where it has been introduced by man. Variants are now grown naturally throughout tropical and sub-tropical zones and are harvested as plantation crops. On productivity grounds, a particularly fast-growing variant is cultivated; Indonesia specialises in this where it is called 'Jati Genjah', and which is typically cut at only 10 years of growth.

Even on most teak plantations trees are rarely harvested with over 20 years of growth, resulting in an inferior quality because there is little heartwood, the densest and oil-rich part, nor is there the weight of a large tree to compress the cellular growth rings as they form.

Genuinely mature teak is not easy to find because reputable dealers will only buy from suppliers of wood from certified "sustainable forest" importers such as FSC certified ones, meaning plantation wood. The reason for this is that other sources could be Burma, from where the EU has issued sanctions banning the import, or from illegal logging in other countries, which is rife throughout SE Asia and Africa.

Studies by the London think-tank Chatham House, have reported that up to very recently, nearly half the tropical logs, sawn timber, and plywood traded worldwide was illegal. (In Indonesia, one of the world’s largest timber producers, more than 80% of logs were cut illegally in 2001.) Even after a decade-long slow improvement, 100m cubic metres of illicit timber are still stripped from forests each year, according to the latest study this year.

 

[boomerangben]

Barnac1e,

Thanks for the interesting post. I got abut tunnel visioned about boat building timber and I can see that young trees are ok for veneers.

 

[Lyulph Hesling]

There are a whole lot of these "magic bean" forestry and agriculture super projects going on. They are all based on you buying into the project, now, usually on a wholly unidentifiable (yet overpriced) patch of land, paying up front, for huge (but unrealistic) profits in 10 to 20 years, based on theoretical maximum (or research station) growth rates.

If you do go in I suspect that there will then be "unexpected" additional investments you have to make, to keep your project alive. I very much doubt that the company will be there when you go to collect the cheque, if it is the yields will be "unavoidably" too low for an actual pay out!

I would send the money to that nice Nigerian banker who wants to steal £10 million from the national oil company.... it is more likely to work.

 

[Bassplayer]

Drifting a little... But this reminds me of the Ostrich meat farms of a few years ago and how you would make lots of money 'cos everyone would e eating ostrich meat. Hmmm more chance with Dodo farming methinks.

 

[DownWest]

The Ostrich farms work a bit better than the scams. It is tasty, there is a market, and it is is good for you. Perhaps not as profitable as they sold it as, but can work as a business, couple around here. And the eggs make BIG omelettes.
A

 

[LONG_KEELER]

From what I have read that is a fairly typical growth period for plantation teak. Don't forget that much teak is cut for veneers and maturity is not an issue. Other less critical applications are for such things as poor quality garden furniture.

The best teak (Tectona Grandis) originally grew in the dry, hilly terrain of forests in Southeast Asia, all other locations where it is now found are where it has been introduced by man. Variants are now grown naturally throughout tropical and sub-tropical zones and are harvested as plantation crops. On productivity grounds, a particularly fast-growing variant is cultivated; Indonesia specialises in this where it is called 'Jati Genjah', and which is typically cut at only 10 years of growth.

Even on most teak plantations trees are rarely harvested with over 20 years of growth, resulting in an inferior quality because there is little heartwood, the densest and oil-rich part, nor is there the weight of a large tree to compress the cellular growth rings as they form.

Genuinely mature teak is not easy to find because reputable dealers will only buy from suppliers of wood from certified "sustainable forest" importers such as FSC certified ones, meaning plantation wood. The reason for this is that other sources could be Burma, from where the EU has issued sanctions banning the import, or from illegal logging in other countries, which is rife throughout SE Asia and Africa.

Studies by the London think-tank Chatham House, have reported that up to very recently, nearly half the tropical logs, sawn timber, and plywood traded worldwide was illegal. (In Indonesia, one of the world’s largest timber producers, more than 80% of logs were cut illegally in 2001.) Even after a decade-long slow improvement, 100m cubic metres of illicit timber are still stripped from forests each year, according to the latest study this year.

Thanks Barnacle !

Excellent report. I'm sure that most of us try to purchase sustainable, ethically produced timber now .

 

[BrianH]

Thanks Barnacle !

Excellent report. I'm sure that most of us try to purchase sustainable, ethically produced timber now .

Thanks Long Keeler, I'm pleased to have raised awareness about the illegal logging problem because it is really quite serious and we all have a duty, especially we who use the expensive species, to act responsibly.

My interest in teak in particular has resulted from pondering what to do about my ageing teak deck and in illegal logging in general from a Damascene revelation a few years earlier, which I would like to relate – perhaps soporific for some and in which case better to switch to the next thread now....

While kicking my heels in London in 1956 after release from the RAF and through contact with the Canadian military attaché there, I was made aware of the possibility of a short service commission in the RCAF by virtue of my RAF training. Looking for any means to escape the drab post-war life of Britain I jumped at the chance and after a few months was aboard a RCAF Canadair transport aircraft bound for Montreal.

Transatlantic flights then were a world apart from today's swift, non-stop hops - we took 27 hours in total, stopping in the Azores and Newfoundland to refuel. But the final leg had me on a jump seat in the cockpit as we crossed the Labrador coast in good visibility, fascinated by the unfolding vista of my new homeland. I was mesmerised by the vastness of the landscape, unending forests interspersed by small lakes for mile after mile, hour after hour; I had never seen such unbroken, unpopulated distances before. I distinctly remember thinking, with the trees stretching to the horizon in every direction, that no way could the warnings of the emerging green brigade, of the dangers of resource depletion, ever come to pass here, the area was just too vast and the distances a logistical difficulty, to make any great indent into this corner of the world.

Later on my life took a number of turns and I spent most of it living and working in different parts of the world until, based back in Europe and shortly before my final retirement in 2003, I had to make a business trip to Toronto and then Montreal. Consequently, I found myself one morning sitting at a window seat on the upper deck of an Air Canada 747-400, gazing down at a similar stretch of Labrador coast that I had crossed almost 50 years before, although in a different world of comfort.

However, as the landscape unfolded before me I could scarcely believe my eyes, I was seeing a very different terrain from what I remembered – this was unbroken earth and rock, sometimes a lake. Nowhere, but absolutely nowhere, were there any trees. And so it continued interminably; north-eastern Canada, basically the province of Quebec, had been completely denuded, it was just bare earth and rock until we began our course and eventual descent over Ontario.

Later, while attending a conference just outside Montreal, I caught, by an extreme coincidence, a local news item about an emerging scandal of illegal logging concessions sold by past Quebec provincial government officials, even possibly ministers, and speculation of upcoming prosecutions. None of this seemed to reach the world's news feeds – indeed, I subsequently could not trace any further information about this on the Internet.

Imagine, if this happened in a civilised and advanced society with a strong rule of law, what is happening in Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil and Indonesia? In Canada, the timber was relatively inexpensive softwoods but entire regions were still stripped; what then of the valuable mahogany of Africa and central America where the local population is poor and logging companies can buy whatever and whomever they want. I personally have witnessed the illegal clearing of mature trees in Indonesia for the dual profit of hardwood timber together with land clearance for the serried ranks of palm oil plantations. It is not just the planet's lungs we are tearing out, entire animal species are losing their only possible natural habitats.

For anyone who made it as far as here, sorry for the rambling rant but it behoves all of us to not contribute to this rape of the planet and to always be sure we use timber from reputable sources.

 

[Lyulph Hesling]

Sad, isn't it? Very similar experiences in the mountains of Vietnam, much of which is stripped, with a blue haze of smoke hanging over it. I once sat and watched 14 huge teak logs (one per large lorry) heading for the ports, probably taken illegally from Laos, to end up as garden furniture or decks. They moved at night. Local houses are made with teak (lovely 12 inch boards), but these timbers are in use for hundreds of years, as they do not rot or get eaten, so it makes good sense. Not so sure about decks on GRP boats, or even wooden ones.

 

[BrianH]

Sad, isn't it? Very similar experiences in the mountains of Vietnam, much of which is stripped, with a blue haze of smoke hanging over it. I once sat and watched 14 huge teak logs (one per large lorry) heading for the ports, probably taken illegally from Laos, to end up as garden furniture or decks.

I worked out of Singapore for many years and saw the same bare hills and burning brushwood (from the stripped logs) through Cambodia and Thailand - couldn't say it was illegal but suspect so as the whole of SE Asia is cashing in on easy pickings that logging brings and corruption is rife in the region. It is why the EU has banned all timber products from Burma where logging is in top gear of stripping mature trees by companies owned by the ruling generals with no monitoring possibilities or sustainable replanting programs.

Not so sure about decks on GRP boats, or even wooden ones.

Just like the products of the rapacious fishing industry, a large proportion of production goes to Japan for building, furniture and flooring - I don't think much ends up in boats in Europe - EU countries are quite vigilant in monitoring what is imported. Then again, I could be wrong, there are ways around everything. I certainly will not be replacing my teak deck (don't start me on that, I already have the crank label on the subject).

My old HR is stuffed full with mahogany and I needed a length to cover a join where I had renewed a veneer-faced panel. We have a local marine wood supply company - all properly accredited with FSC products. To get the length I had to buy a thick piece of planking, which they cut to the correct dimension for me while I kept what was left for future jobs. Anyway, this obviously plantation fast-growth length was surprisingly light in both weight and colour, although clearly mahogany from the reddish grain structure. Incredibly, I had to use a dark mahogany stain before varnishing, just to get it to look like mahogany! If plantation-grown teak is of similar texture it would not last long on a deck.

 

[pappaecho]

Having worked in the Forest Research Institute at Kepong in Malaysia, I can assure yo that Teak Trees take more than 18 years to mature. They might make passably good telegraph poles but not much else.
You would be better advised to place you money with a very nice Nigerian gentleman, who wants to get some money out of Nigeria without the Taxman knowing.. May I pass on your name?

 

[LONG_KEELER]

You have to wonder what life would be like now if oil had not been discovered in the quantities that it has been.

I was brought up with galvanised buckets, wooden crates and woollen swimming trunks.

I would expect timber to have been very scarce. Even in Nelson's times there were wood wars.

Shame in a way that oil is used for fuel. Seems much too important a commodity.

Apparently there is lots of aluminium about which is an extraordinary material. I only recently found out that Routemaster Buses were made of it.

 

[BrianH]

Having worked in the Forest Research Institute at Kepong in Malaysia, I can assure yo that Teak Trees take more than 18 years to mature.

I don't think anyone is claiming that an 18 year old teak tree (sapling?) is "mature", not even the company trying to peddle 'investments' in the plantation. But this is the sort of age at which many are harvested throughout the world. Yes, immature and consequently without any real heartwood, but usable for veneers or cheap garden furniture and other non-structural applications. I'd hate to put any on or in my boat unless as cosmetic trimming, however.