RIBLUM synthetic Lumber

Our world today needs every tree that grows, providing shelter for animals, better air quality and resisting climate change.

But human acts don't seem to be considering that.in a country like mine (Tunisia) national forests doesn't help providing more than 10% of the local lumber market needs. The rest of it is imported (with no fsc labels to cut prices). that was the case for years, and now the lumber prices are skyrocketing with a big offer shortage.

This is the case of all the MENA region, sub-Saharan africa, and surely for any dry climate country.

RIBLUM is a wood obtained without touching a tree. This material which is produced locally and on demand, is in fact carbonivorus and contains no harmful chemicals. We have developed a technology to make synthetic lumber from vegetal fibers of monocot plants that can be grown locally in aggressive climates. we are able to produce many variants of this synthetic lumber, that can be suited for furniture making, construction, exterior applications....

The product we are producing now is actually made from recycling palm tree leaves waste, and it is dedicated to furniture production. 

Our company aims to promote the integration of oasis communities into the economic cycle. This is a large population of workers who have no farm-land ownership, and they were for a long time only dependent on seasonal agriculture related work with no social coverage.

Introducing industrial activity in this rural desert region is big news, as this activity will help sustain healthier palm groves, collect their leaf waste and spread good practices awareness.

For the youth this region is not the place to be, because they struggle to find work, for decades the county have known strong internal migration of college graduates leaving the interior regions towards big cities. We are trying to compensate that by offering descent employment for the young, and recruiting local college graduates to work on tech development jobs.

growing up in the Kebili, Nefzawa region, I was watching up close the impact of the local economic cycle on the social life of people and family structures. Who mainely rely on agriculture or craftsmaship.

Designing the solution in the first place took all that in consideration, then we arranged many meetings with local deciders, the mayor and local farmers association. As their engagement have an important key role to the project.

We are aiming for a better integration of our project on the environmental, economic and social levels.

We are applying to SOLVE, be cause we mainly need technical partners support and financial support. We are also more than exited for this multi-national collaboration, as it presents a great opportunity to enlarge our network and get closer to new markets.

Admittedly, the transformation of vegetable fibers is not new, and on all fibers sourced from palm trees. The traditional production of palm derivatives is nowadays restricted to processing with low added value. RIBLUM comes to revalue this abundant local resource, and imposes itself on the market thanks to a product with technical characteristics (mechanical resistance, resistance to water, fire resistance) comparable to the rest of modern and industrial products. We also note that the reconstituted woods existing on the market (such as MDF, OSB, LVL, PSL, etc.) do not have good aesthetics. hence our product is a new one in the timber market. On the other hand, our industrial methods and our production cycle are also innovative (based on digital rapid prototyping technologies), which allows us to escape from the traditional value chain of furniture production.

The core tech we are using is a hybrid technology, obtained by bringing our own innovation to make a regular industrial technique more eco-friendly and adapt it to be used with new raw material.