Cover Story
You've Got A Winner In Teak
But Samoa’s Strickland Brothers is looking at kwila for China market
A fine teak table and set of chairs for just S$1900 sounds like a bargain. By world standards it indeed is.
You can pick such a bargain up in Samoa from Strickland Brothers Ltd, manufacturers of most things timber. But the trouble is, says the company’s financial controller, Jerry Hope Samoa has only small amounts of teak.
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But Strickland Brothers has hopes of finding buyers in China for furniture made with another fine Samoan hardwood, kwila, which is rather more abundant.
The company is making inquiries through the Pacific Islands Forum Trade Office opened recently in Beijing. “It urged us to come to a trade fair in October,” Hope said. “There’s a great demand for tropical timber there.”
Strickland Brothers began business in a small way at the beginning of the 1990s by manufacturing cane furniture, and still makes small amounts of it. As sales grew, the company moved into timber, furniture making and hardware and picked up three logging concessions in Samoa’s few remaining areas of natural forest.
Most furniture output is snapped up by local buyers, with a growing interest from New Zealand. At the third Pacific Islands trade fair, mounted at Apia in September, the company ventured into exhibiting its stuff and was surprised at the reaction, particularly from people desirous of its teak dining and coffee tables and chairs. What a pity it can’t get its hands on more teak.
Strickland Brothers is still at the early stage of experimenting with the treatment and drying of wood. But at the rate business is growing, 20 percent a year, it plans to invest in its own kiln soon instead of carrying the cost of drying timber in one run by another business.
