The process of transforming bamboo poles into flat bamboo boards and bamboo flooring is quite complex, and is very labour and capital intensive.

Suitably mature and hard bamboo stems or culms, 5-6 years old, are harvested and sorted, and the stems (or culms) cut to the required length.

The first step in processing the bamboo is splitting the stems into strips, after which the hard green outer layer and pithy inner layer are stripped off the bamboo pieces.

These rough strips are then boiled to eliminate insects and fungus, and heat treated (for Caramel or Carbonised colour boards). Bamboo, being a giant grass, has a much higher natural sugar content than timber, and baking (or carbonising) of the raw strips results in a caramelisation of the sugars in the bamboo fibres, giving the bamboo a rich golden brown colour.

The treated strips are kiln dried to achieve a uniform moisture content of 6-9%.

For normal, laminated bamboo boards, the strips are then accurately machined to exact size, and sorted into colour shades. The strips are then glued into multi-strip layers, and the layers combined into boards using hot press laminating machines. Final machining (for sizing) and sanding is then carried out.

For strand-woven bamboo boards, the rough strips are crushed and soaked in a special glue compound. The treated bamboo fibres are fed into a high pressure press, and compressed into rough strand-woven boards or square “logs”. These boards and logs in turn are dried, machined and laminated to produce the final strand-woven bamboo boards. Final machining (for sizing) and sanding is then carried out.

For flooring the floorboards are then machined to produce the tongue and groove or self-locking edge profiles. Pre-finished flooring then has the UV cured coating layers applied.

After a final quality control inspection, the products are packaged and sent to the warehouse for dispatch to the customer.