African Hardwood Marketing, a new business with offices in the UK, is exporting hardwood from the Congolese forests for furniture and flooring.
The company via its Congolese and Zimbabwe-based affiliate SAB Congo, has started sending shipments of ‘top grade’ African timber to Asia and Europe, and the company is currently applying for FSC chain of custody certification.
One of the architects of the venture is businessman Elkin Pianim, former son-in-law of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. Speaking from his London office, he said that the African timber operation traces its roots to November 2000.
“I’d never been in timber before and didn’t know anything about it. But when I was in Johannesburg a real estate developer suggested that we consider going into the business in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“He put us in touch with somebody in SOCEBO – a forestry company owned by the Congo government . We started talking with them in 2000 and signed a concession deal in April 2001. The deal was that we would pay for all start-up costs and initial capital equipment and would own 60% of the resulting company, with the remainder owned by SOCEBO. We called the newly formed company Societé Africain du Bois au Congo – SAB Congo.”
Mr Pianim is now managing director of African Hardwood Marketing, which is effectively SAB Congo’s London-based export sales agent, while SAB Congo itself is managed by Andreas Heinel out of Harare, Zimbabwe.
He said: “The SAB concession is for 209,000ha of savannah forest in the Katanga Province of the DRC.
“We went to the Zimbabwean forestry ministry and hired forestry experts. They specified the equipment and detailed an environmental impact study and worked out the impact of logging as carried out within Congolese Environment Ministry guidelines which mandated selective felling.
“Our advisers suggested more rigorous guidelines than those mandated by the Ministry, which we have implemented, and we are exploring Forest Stewardship Council certification for SAB.
“We have the concession for 25 years. Guidelines specify marking out the area on a grid system, extracting a capped number of mature trees per grid square, and then leaving that square for 30 years to regenerate. We now have 80 people at a base camp, equipped with mobile sawmills and workers’ quarters, which is where the logs are converted into planks.”
Felling the wood is straightforward, he said. But, as other timber companies have found out, removing and transporting the timber is a far more complicated operation.
Mr Pianim, who previously studied economics in New York and completed an MBA in London while managing a host of business ventures in the UK and US, said: “We had been told that because SOCEBO was government-owned, permits and paperwork would be relatively straightforward as they would handle it all. But in the end we had to do all the export work ourselves.
“Even when we had all our paperwork, bureaucratic delays at the border could be two weeks. And when you do get border clearance, you probably find your truck driver’s transit visas have expired so you can find yourself stuck again for a further few days.
“I will never forget one of the Zambian Health Authority staff at the Congo/Zambia border. He wore a long white coat, torn sneakers, a grubby T-shirt, a broken stethoscope around his neck, and dirty thick-rimmed glasses.
“This man is known as ‘Doctor’. He pulls you out of the immigration queue and requests innoculation certificates, which no-one carries anymore. He then pulls out a big blunt rusty needle and demands to vaccinate you, against who knows what, and then holds you in a dark, smelly, roach-infested room ‘for quarantine and observation’. You can avoid the bogus injection, but only if you purchase a US$60 medical certificate, which everyone is only too happy to do.”
Mr Pianim’s company is felling kakula, African teak, and rosewood, with logs that range from 0.5m diameter upwards, and are on average between 4.4m and 6.5m in length.
The logs are converted into sawn timber on-site, air-dried and sent to Pretoria, where it is kiln-dried and delivered to local customers, or shipped overseas via Durban. So far, Rhoms Transglobal has taken most of Mr Pianim’s supplies, and used it for furniture, flooring, doors, and decking manufacture as well as selling it as sawn timber to the wholesale trade.
Munroe Swirsky, managing director of Rhoms, said: “Elkin gave us some material called kakula, which comes from the Pterocarpus family and looks like Burmese teak. It is magnificent stuff and very stable. SAB Congo’s cutting is superb and the presentation is good. The colour of the material varies between red and purple and it is first grade.
“The grain structure is spectacular. The logistics of coming from the Congo with timber are incredible, but Elkin is a reliable supplier. He came through with it. We are going to do a lot more business with him.”
Mr Pianim said: “We would liked to have shipped much more product by now, but we ran into unforeseen problems. Perhaps in light of setting out into a completely new business, and facing a stiff bureau-cracy in the Congo, we have done okay, given that very discerning customers are satisfied with the product.
“It has been a big learning experience so far, and is a fascinating industry to be involved in. I am reasonably pleased and we are looking forward to shipping our full volume, and further enhancing the value of our product.”
