COVID cramps school furniture business
Bamboo pivot sprouts new ventures for 78-y-o
Published:Wednesday | November 3, 2021 | 12:11 AMJudana Murphy/Gleaner Writer
Seventy-eight-year-old Vincent Carara would usually be overwhelmed with school furniture orders, but with the arrival of COVID-19, the booming business came to a sudden halt as classes moved online.
He is now fulfilling the first order of 150 chairs and desks in almost two years, for the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF).
He noted that the price of plyboard has increased, even though the quality of the crucial raw material has diminished. This means that his workers have to be sealing and sanding for longer periods before staining the plywood.
“Because we are in the business so long, people who we do business with will always call us back, because they look at the quality and the time of delivery and we have our certificate from the Bureau of Standards,” he explained.
Carara shared that prior to the pandemic, business was consistent as there was always a new school being opened or one institution or another having a refurbishing exercise.
“Hopefully, it will pick up again,” he said, with several schools set to reopen physically next week. “I don’t have much of a staff now, just three people. We used to have about 15 people here – spray men, polishing men, welders and upholsterers.”
Carara started out manufacturing nails and home furniture and has been operating Electroplating Specialists on Arnold Road in Kingston for 55 years.
“I brought in a machine from England that puts plastic on the metal, so it won’t get scratched and it won’t rust. I used to make beach chairs for hotels about 40 years ago. I used to get a lot of hotel work, and I even did 2,000 chairs for an auditorium in those days, but now everything is imported,” he said.
The veteran furniture maker told The Gleaner that the downtime in business pointed him to exploring the wonder plant – bamboo – which is estimated to cover 65,000 hectares locally.
He is on his way to investing in bamboo as a means of ecotourism housing and eco-friendly farming, by way of greenhouses.
“Not everybody wants to go in the high-rise buildings. I want to offer something different and I am going to do organic food. That is where the demand is going to be – low-income houses and greenhouses for the farmers,” Carara said, adding that he would also like to share his knowledge with the youth.
Sourcing the bamboo is the least of his problems as he recently leased five acres of land in Portland, much of which is covered in bamboo.
“The concern was curing the bamboo and I have overcome that, and now, I can cure the bamboo by myself, very easy and very quick. I don’t have a termite problem,” he said, noting, “a lot of young people don’t want to farm because they don’t want to use a fork but if they have a greenhouse, they will do it.”
The bamboo houses will be made with a sliding panel system and insulation, while the greenhouses will be joined by metal connectors.
Carara has also developed solutions for mulching and water storage in the form of drums and open concrete tanks, respectively.
The mulch machine is powered by two bearings, which makes it spin and breaks down the peelings and trash in the process.
These tanks, he said, can be lined out by tens and twenties to be filled by the rain, and then attached to a bamboo drip-irrigation system.
“I am going to go into production as soon as possible to start the greenhouse and I can do the backyard greenhouse. I am also making smaller mulch machines that people can just put their waste from the kitchen in it, instead of sending everything to the dump and that will make the soil nutrient-rich,” explained Carara, who has also explored bamboo tiles by combining bamboo fibre with cement.