From Husks to Homes: The Cocoboard Journey for Sustainable Building

Affordable building materials are a worldwide demand and harbor a big income-generating potential for the economic well-being and health of low-income groups in developing countries. Agricultural and forestry residues have already been considered as a potential resource for low-cost building materials. The Philippines is the second-largest producer of coconuts worldwide; the fibrous coconut husk represents a large agricultural residue (≈5 billion tons/year). The technical feasibility of producing low and medium-density fiberboards made of milled coconut husk (Cocoboards) was shown in an SNF r4d project between the Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH) and several partners in the Philippines.

Even if the raw materials (coconut husk and tannins) for the production of Cocoboards are available in large volumes, the previous results of the project show that their actual accessibility is a very critical point.

The collaboration between the Bern University of Applied Sciences and the Visayas State University (VSU) started already in the previous SNF r4d project, Cocoboards. In this project, the VSU performed a detailed survey on the availability of coconut husks in the diverse provinces of the Philippines, interviewing more than 1000 farmers. Furthermore, student exchanges between the two universities took place during the Cocoboard project, permitting a mutual transfer of scientific and cultural knowledge.

Based thus on the successful collaboration between the two institutions, a further step towards consolidating the information regarding the accessibility of coconut husk resources was intended.

A stakeholder workshop with participants from the research teams and actors from a governmental agency (Philippine Coconut Authority) and the private sector (plantation owners and producers of coconut products) took place from May 3rd to 5th, 2017, and included:

a) general inputs and discussions on the data collected during the first five months of the project

b) plenary and group sessions to develop possible project topics

c) joint outlining of project proposals

d) launching of a consortium among stakeholders and researchers for further collaboration (“Cocoboard Technology and Sustainable Value Chain Development Program”).

The Research Partnership Grant represented a key contribution to the strengthening and continuation of the collaboration between the partners beyond the initial research phase and towards the implementation of the achieved results. It also permitted the collection of key inputs for the preparation of new project proposals.

“PINOY Tannin” – Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d) – accepted. “CocoCreate – Resilient Value Chain Development for Cocoboard Technology” – Southeast Asia-Europe Joint Funding Scheme for Research and Innovation – rejected.

Through the Pinoy Tannin project, the collaboration between the Bern University of Applied Sciences and the Visayas State University was further consolidated. A mutual exchange of students was planned, even if, at the moment, it has not yet been implemented due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

The promising data gathered concerning the accessibility of coconut husks in the Philippines also led to the creation in 2020 of a spin-off from the Bern University of Applied Sciences (NatureLoop AG), with the primary target to set up a pilot production of Cocoboards in the Philippines and, in a second step, to transfer the technology to neighbouring countries or even worldwide. NatureLoop AG has so far gathered high interest in Switzerland and has already won numerous challenging national grants, which helped in the fine development of the business plan, the financial support of the laboratory-scale optimization of the manufacturing process, and the widening of the national and international network of stakeholders and potential investors.

The possibility of getting Research Partnership grants is a great opportunity for the preparation and consolidation of collaborations between Swiss and developing country partners. The importance of an on-site joint development of research and implementation activities was clearly highlighted during the project. The achieved results would have been much trickier to reach through remote digital communication. The on-site meeting and workshop represented a high-value tool for better bridging the cultural gap between the two partners, and to better understand the respective strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, it allowed meeting the full research team of the hosted institution, not limited to the most prominent representatives. This aspect also helped in understanding the actual potential of the forecasted collaboration.