The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) has signed an agreement with Chennai-based Century Plyboards, a leading plywood manufacturers in the country, to strengthen agro forestry research and promote plywood based industrial agro forestry plantations.

This would also help to create self reliance in raw material security besides augmenting the green cover of Tamil Nadu.

The requirement of wood and wood products is bound to witness an unprecedented trend due to various economic and policy initiatives taken in India and it has been estimated that the country needs nearly 150 million m3 of wood after 2020 onwards.

India’s forest is almost legally closed and there is no scope of getting raw materials from these natural forests and the National Forest Policy has directed the wood based industries to derive raw materials on their own without depending on forest department.

However, the wood based industries barring few exceptions have not taken the policy directions seriously which resulted in massive import of logs and uncertainty in supply chain process.

It is in this context TNAU conceived a comprehensive Consortium of Industrial Agro forestry which incorporated all stakeholders– wood based industries, agro forestry producers, value addition industries, research institutes and financial institutions.

As a part of consortium project development, TNAU signed the agreement with Century Plyboards (I) Limited alias Sharon Ply.

The agreement was signed by Dr. C.R. Ananda Kumar, Registrar, TNAU and Vishnu Khemani, Managing Director, Century Plyboards (I) Limited in Mettupalayam, near here.