Modified wood is becoming increasingly popular. Photo / Richard Robinson
Modified wood is becoming increasingly popular. Photo / Richard Robinson
KEY POINTS:
A British company, Kurawood, is planning to raise up to £5 million ($14 million) to buy and expand a New Zealand business which makes a modified form of radiata pine.
Kurawood hopes to raise the money by issuing 17 million shares at 100p on the UK Alternative InvestmentMarket (AIM).
It believes the move will help to capitalise on a "huge market" for modified woods, the Timber Trades Journal has reported.
The cash injection would allow Kurawood to purchase New Zealand company PG Industries as well as its manufacturing plant.
PG Industries chief technical officer Peter McArthur, 49, started developing the patented VECO process in 2002, using organic compounds to strengthen radiata pine and give it the characteristics of hardwood.
PG Industries received $109,000 in taxpayer funding in 2004 and 2005 to perfect a new process for hardening, colouring and stabilising radiata pine and to solve problems with cracks in the timber.
Money raised in the float would also be used to boost production from the current 5000cu m to 50,000cu m.
Kurawood plans to use the material to produce a range of products, including skirtings, architraves, doors, windows, worktops, kitchen cabinetry and garden furniture in Southeast Asia before export to Britain.
Kurawood says the material can be engineered to the hardness required, even to the level of one of the hardest woods, lignum vitae.
Kura (meaning beautiful in Maori) is hardened using non-toxic compounds derived from simple organic chemistry. It is every bit as solid as oak, walnut and mahogany, but because it grows in renewable plantation forests, the environment does not have to suffer for the sake of home improvement.
Kurawood chairman Roy Tilleard said the New Zealand product offered an alternative for builders and homeowners keen to avoid the controversial use of tropical hardwoods such as teak and mahogany.
