Lotus Kuatan Flour Mill is making a strong pivot in its business model, the company is proposing to diversify from its current business of turning wheat to flour for bakery, to plantation of timber trees.
The group plans to harvest and process, fast-growing plants like Acacia, Gmelina, Albizia, Eucalyptus, and bamboo and turn then into wood chips and bamboo chips.
Without straying from its current business, the plantation business is targeted as providing new source of recurring income stream for the company. Lotus has already entered into agreements to acquire few companies, which have few parcels of forest reserve lands and state lands that can be used for the intended plantation.
Accoring to its director, the group is looking to supply these material to timber mills and factories that use wood/bamboo chips as raw materials in their manufacturing processes. Wood chips are a common industrial raw material for the production of wood pulp, furniture, and woodworking, particleboard and fibreboard as well as a widely recognised form of biomass fuel.
As for bamboo, it is a popular non-timber raw material for pulp and papermaking, furniture, and construction. Based on industry practice, the supplies of wood/bamboo chips are made on an order-by-order basis instead of entering into any long-term supply contract.
