Do you know that many Indonesian villages are almost entirely built with wood?
This is the case in East Kalimantan, an Indonesian province also known as Borneo, where we source the wood used for our decking and flooring production, but also for our homeware brand I-Rewood.
The wood used is internationally known as Ironwood (“Ulin” in Indonesian). It is a remarkable and highly dense hardwood because of its extremely slow growth rate (0.5mm/year).
However, ironwood became so rare because of excessive logging and is now critically endangered. Hence, it is critical to reuse old wood instead of logging new trees.
Ironwood has been literally used for everything. Roads, buildings, boats, bridges, and even toilets!
House on pilotis made of ironwood
Toilet and access ramp, all made of ironwood
With such extensive deforestation, it is not hard to imagine how this wood became so rare. Unfortunately, the usage list mentioned earlier doesn’t even include the amount of logs and processed wood that have been exported, sometimes illegally.
As modernity hits these villages built with this wonderful wood, cement and steel are rapidly becoming the materials of choice for what was previously built with ironwood.
From wood to cement, a logical evolution
We are very careful about where the wood comes from in order to comply with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) requirements. To do so, we need to know exactly where each piece of Kaltimber wood comes from. Indeed, we need to guarantee that every board or beam comes from a disused structure that was being demolished. To do so, we are working in close relation with the Indonesian Forest Ministry.
Our team based in Bali also visits Kalimantan regularly to select wood, but we usually rely on a network of trusted reclaimed wood agents.
A disused jetty demolished under supervision of Guillaume Carnevale, director of Kaltimber.
This process ensures the purchase of fully legal wood supply prior to its transformation into decking and flooring for local sale as well as exportation.
Purchasing reclaimed wood is every buyer’s pride to help in preventing further deforestation while owning a piece of history. Kaltimber also recently committed to replanting 50 ironwood trees for every 950m2 of fully processed materials sold.
Wood with a story for our client: “my decking was a boat!”