About Bukidnon Giant Bamboo Resources Corp
We Care
We are but stewards of our planet. Bamboo creates many opportunities for us to heal our planet, offering livelihood for farmers and building a future for their families. It's a beautiful material that sustains life in many respects. And we make every effort to make all these a reality, because we care.
About Bukidnon
Our roots started in Bukidnon, a 1.05 million hectare landlocked tableland province in southern Philippines. With high elevation, cool climate, fertile soil, high rain fall and intense sunlight, Giant Bamboo (Dendrocalamus asper) grows in its most ideal environment, yielding biggest volume and number of poles per clump per hectare per year.
Bukidnon is home to more than 1.5 million (year 2020 census) with a significant population of Indigenous People (IP) composed of seven (7) tribes. The IP communities hold 250,000 hectares of ancestral domain or roughly 25% of the forestal land outside the protected areas of the province.
Company History
Since the log-ban of 1986, the timber industry of the Philippines continuously declined, but ironically, deforestation continued unabated throughout the country.
Forest cover of the Philippines declined by 60% from 17Mha (1934) to 6.8Mha (2014). 10Mha of the forest was lost in 70 years . This has led to the dependence on importation by as much as 70% of the national timber requirements.
Predevelopment works of BGB started in 2018 when its founder Mr. Bob Tinsay proposed to co-founder Rod Bioco to industrialize the business of bamboo. Bob initiated the Backyard Phase to test the interest of foreign buyers. That involved manual bamboo poles splitting using bolos, and the slats planed using regular lumber planer, and then treated in makeshift drums to soak the bamboo slats in heated boron salt solution overnight. These were then sun-dried for several weeks, which was a big challenge given the high humidity of Bukidnon.
Surprisingly, the founders received positive interest from foreign buyers who preferred the characteristics of Giant Bamboo slats despite the crude process. However, to scale up production, the Backyard Phase had to move up to Industrialization Scale. To test the technically feasibility, the co-founders invested in machineries from Vietnam and China to do the Industrial Demonstration Phase of the project.
Fortunately, the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) approved the loan of BGB to undertake its Demonstration Phase in January 2019, which was also the time BGB formally got incorporated with other partners joining. However, pandemic came, and the demonstration phase was delayed to 2022. This has not changed the resolve of the founders.
In 2023, BGB successfully commissioned its bamboo processing facility with the installation of planers, dryers, and lamination equipment.
Moving forward, BGB has embarked in a bigger mission:
The Prosperity Initiative
+ 30,000 hectares Bamboo
+ 10,000 hectares Permanent Forest
+ 10,000 hectares High Value Crops
+ 20,000 Households uplift from poverty
+ Php400,000/household Livelihood
Poles received in Vietnam October 2018
The BGB Management Team
Roderico R. Bioco,
Founding Chairman
BGB Co-founder, Rod has more than 35 years in the agri-business. He is an industrialist and a ag-policy advocate promoting the interests and welfare of our small farmers. He founded Mindanao Grain Processing Co., Inc. (MinGrains) and built its post-harvest facilities for corn. He also organized Philippine Maize Federation, Inc. (PhilMaize), as the national voice of our corn farmers.
Roberto V. Tinsay, Jr.
Founding President
BGB Co-founder, Bob has more than 35 years in the agro-forestry and timber industry, as well as in agri-business. He pioneered the initiative to industrialize the bamboo sector as the alternative to our local timber. He founded MJJ, which developed a proof of concept for manufacturing bamboo slats and introduced into the international market.
Atty. Burt Estrada,
Corporate Secretary
Burt Miquiabas Estrada, Datu Manhan-ayan of the Bukidnon Tagulwanon Tribe, is a founding director of BGB. He was the former National President and Chairman of the 25th Board of Governors of the
Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP). He has more than 25 years experience in organizing IP groups to form cooperatives and engage in agricultural production including bamboo.
Engr. Roger V. Navarro, Former Director
Roger is a founding director of BGB with more than 40years in the agri-business sector with senior executive positions in Mindanao Grain Processing Co., and Swift Poultry Company. He was also a past President of Phil Maize Federation, Inc. He is also into dairy farming, as well as corn, cassava, bamboos and fruits production. Roger has relinquished his role in BGB to serve as Undersecretary for Operations of the Department of Agriculture.
Allan Cuenca,
Transformation Director
Allan brings more than 35 years of experience in the ICT sector specializing in the food supply chain. His background in IT, Data Science, Automation, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Strategic Technology Portfolio, helps BGB and the bamboo sector transcend to the next level of Industrial Revolution 4.0. In particular, he creates the advance Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP+) solution of BGB.
Engr. Julius Bioco
General Manager
Julius has more than 40 years of experience in industrial automation, engineering maintenance, and computer-aided fabrication from more than 4 countries (Italy, China, Canada, and Philippines), specializing in the food and agro processing. He was also head of engineering of Mindanao Grain Processing Co., Inc., Philippine Foremost Milling Corp. (Feedmill), and Mariveles Grain Terminal Corp.
