Kawayan Collective - from start-up to industry leader
Kawayan Collective Agriculture Cooperative is the leading bamboo construction supply company in the Philippines, with over 55,000 bamboo poles graded and treated to the standards set forth in ISO19624. Their mission is to elevate bamboo as a sustainable, durable, beautiful building material and their vision is better homes for all Filipinos.
They have built 60 homes in five years and served nearly 400 customers with quality bamboo products. The team has grown to 40 full-time employees, with 40+ harvesters in the mountains ensuring sustainable supply. At the same time, their customer network of architects, engineers, builders, and home and business owners has spanned nationwide. In 2021, they were recognized by the Asian Pacific Housing Forum as an "Inspirational Practice." In 2022, the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR) recommended their bamboo housing for middle-class housing (Roble, 2022).
Kawayan Collective was founded by married couple, Ray and Amy Villanueva in 2018. Architect Ray Villanueva is a Filipino-American licensed architect in the State of Washington, educated at the University of Washington. He has designed and built over 30 bamboo houses in the Philippines. General Manager, Amy Villanueva is a social entrepreneur with 20 years of experience, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a Sustainable MBA from Presidio Graduate School.
Hard to believe it has been over 2 years since our last BBB update! Time to share some updates:
Did you end up converting to a cooperative? What is the current size and structure of Kawayan Collective?
We did! It was a long and deliberate process that culminated early this year when the Cooperative Development Authority certified Kawayan Collective Agriculture Cooperative and our founding worker-owners bought out Ray and I as sole-proprietors. The coop is 22-members strong with a 5-person board that meets monthly with KC management team to review Mission, Money, and Member goals, issues and next steps as relate to the overarching strategy of the cooperative. Similar to a corporate or non-profit board – the coop board is an advisory group that helps to guide the management team while leaving daily operations and business decisions in the hands of management.
While we are still learning a lot about the cooperative structure and member engagement – we are excited to see so many employees of KC choose to invest in the company long-term – and we are very proud to be able to make an early special distribution this holiday season for founding members who took the initial risk to join the coop with a minimum contribution equivalent to two months wages. So gratifying to be able to do a significant profit-share within the first year of formation, and hopefully encouraging to future members who have yet to join.
Some of your early challenges included supply, demand and processing time – are these still your top concerns? Or how have these evolved?
We have just reached five years operating as a business so some of the earlier questions/challenges have resolved themselves while new ones arise. We are glad to report that Dauin and our neighboring municipalities have enough bambusa blumeana backyard bamboo stocks to sustainably support an operation our size with ~300 long culms per week for processing. We estimate there are at least 3,000 mature clumps within 20 kilometers of the facility. And conservatively projecting our findings with available data from the Department of Natural Resources, we believe there are over 1,000 towns like ours in the Philippines that can support a similar-sized operation.
Processing time is still a challenge however, and now, it is multiplied by steadily growing demand! We also are more aware of the limitations of bambusa blumeana as our primary species – what it can and can’t do. And on the horizon: How to successfully replicate our operation and help the bamboo industry of the Philippines scale up?
Some rapid-fire thoughts on these challenges:
We are building treated bamboo inventory to help reduce order lead time. This means adding a third treatment tank and team members to add inventory – but it also means we are getting serious about adding new facilities to be able to handle the growing demand.
Bambusa blumeana is great for 3-5M lengths, pinboo and skeleton. Not so good for flattened bamboo, lumber, countertops and flooring. We are encouraging our suppliers to plant more dendrocalamus asper – a species that naturally grows thicker walls and longer, straighter culms – without the thorns!
We are adopting a social franchise approach to replication – and looking for like-minded partners around the country who have the required bamboo supply and access to market. Please let us know if you are interested to learn more.
Kawayan Collective has been busy! You have helped complete over 60 buildings in the last two years – tell us more about your favourite projects you’ve worked on and what you’ve learned.
Dumaguete’s Bamboo Pavilion - Our most iconic project to-date and currently the largest bamboo building in the Philippines at 575 square meters and 16.5 meters tall. You can read more about it here. The Pavilion is truly aspirational – proof that bamboo is capable of more than we’ve previously thought.
Starter Home Kit - Whole-pole bamboo construction gets modular! The 14.5 square meter Starter Home Kit is our most impactful design with 34 homes already completed. The simple structure takes two weeks to finish and costs around 150,000 PHP – providing a practical alternative for Filipino families looking to build back safer and stronger homes – one room at a time.
Kawayan Casitas - Moving bamboo into mainstream modern housing. Bamboo is not going to be the first thing you notice about these houses. Rather, it is how you feel when you walk into one of these homes: Cool, light and at ease. A bit like walking into a well-maintained garden or forest. The homes are self-cooling and naturally lit during the day. They are fortified to withstand typhoons and termites and they cost between 18-25,000 PHP per square meter to build.
What do you say to those who believe bamboo is low-quality or impractical?
Seeing is believing – so the best argument is still our product and projects – and thankfully bamboo enthusiasts are leading the way and helping us to push bamboo further and farther than previously thought possible. When people visit our facility in Dauin, Negros Oriental they are often surprised by how it is organized and looks like a highly-functioning factory – for bamboo. Bamboo can be subjected to the same standards as any commercial material: Graded for quality, treated for durability and designed for easier installation.
But it is not just an aesthetic choice. Bamboo is the most sustainable material in use in construction today. The building construction industry alone is estimated to consume 25% of virgin wood and 40% of raw stone, gravel, and sand globally each year – contributing somewhere between 30-40% of total carbon emissions. As the world comes to terms with climate change and the need to curb emissions – the construction industry will undergo a green revolution similar to the energy industry. You can expect that bamboo will rapidly move from “alternative” to “conventional” and that the Philippines is in a position to help lead the way.
And for those interested in buying or building their own Casitas or Starter Kit – what do you advise?
Please do contact us! We are happy to share designs, prefabricate panels and even customize designs for a given project. Whatever we can do to help make it easier for you to choose bamboo!
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