Bamboo is a great looking and popular green material for folks who want a recognizably green material, available in a variety of ways that few other materials offer. While bamboo is immediately recognizable to most folks, many people may be surprised to learn how many different kinds of bamboo products are available as bamboo ply products remains one of the fastest moving areas of innovation in green materials.

 

Early innovators such as Smith and Fong (Plyboo) and Teragren brought both natural yellow bamboo as well as carbonized or caramelized products to market as manufacturers learned bamboo has natural sugars that brown as they are warmed.

Surprisingly, these bamboo products are all sourced from a single Mosu bamboo species typically grown and harvested in China.

 

While the market has formed around a core set of offerings of natural yellow and carbonized bamboo offered in both a narrow grain pattern, typically called vertical, and a wider striping known as flat where the bamboo knuckles are visible, innovation by early innovators along with other players continue to broaden the range of bamboo products available as many manufacturers offer products that are uniquely theirs.

 

Teragren offers a variation on natural yellow called Wheat, which has some subtle wheat tones present.

 

More recently, Kirei introduced a darker “Chocolate” bamboo to market in 2009 that is darker and appears to be “toasted.” Not surprisingly, Kirei doesnʼt offer a Chocolate edgebanding as reportedly it would be too brittle. The chocolate coloring is dark and rich and otherwise offers yet another color choice, which we’ll discuss further as this series continues — that stains tend to slowly fade when applied to bamboo.

 

Kirei also has a variety of striped products of varying striping widths as they alternate natural yellow with medium toned brown strips.

 

Smith and Fong also has a product that combines natural yellow and darker carbonized products, which combines strands and otherwise pos- industrial waste material in a unique product marketed as Neopolitan.

 

In our next segment in this series, we’ll take a closer look at pricing and how to navigate pricing concerns.

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