"WE MUST TREAT AGROFORESTRY LIKE AGRICULTURE"

S AJJAN BHAJANKA, Chairman, Century Plyboards, reflects on five decades in the plywood industry, India's agroforestry movement, and why a national policy reset is long overdue in this interview with BW Businessworld's Group Editorial Director Noor Fathima Warsia

- Noor Fathima Warsia

You have been deeply involved in the plywood industry since the 1970s. Could you explain how plantation timber became central to the industry in India?

Just out of college, I entered the plywood business in 1974, with a small teacher's veneer unit in Assam. At that time, the only raw material was natural timber from the rainforests in Assam, the Northeast, and other parts of the country. The concept of plantation timber did not exist.

That began to change around the mid-1980s when the matchstick company Wimco introduced poplar plantations in North India to meet their timber needs. They developed nurseries, distributed seedlings, and promised farmers they would buy the yield. Unfortunately, when the crops matured around 1990, Wimco changed plans. The matchstick industry had been disrupted by lighters and paper sticks.

Plywood manufacturers saw the opportunity and began using that timber. Small units were set up in Punjab and Haryana. Around the same time in South India, rubberwood, which was initially treated as firewood after latex extraction, started being used for veneer and plywood. That shift marked the true beginning of plantation-based timber usage in India's plywood sector.

Over the years, you have been vocal about policy-level challenges that have impacted agroforestry and timber-based industries in India. Could you share more on this?