Every harvest season, mountains of rice husk pile up outside mills across India. Often labelled ‘waste’, they are discarded or burned, adding to the smoke that blankets parts of the country. BL Bengani saw an opportunity to turn this problem into a solution. Founding Indowud NFC, a Chennai-based brand, he helped convert rice husk into engineered boards that could replace conventional plywood.
From across 110 rice mills in and around the city, unprocessed rice husk is tied and loaded onto heavy vehicles to begin an expedition to Sholavaram, on the northern outskirts of Chennai. The agricultural residue goes through stages of cleaning and size reduction, gets blended with a binder system, compressed under heat and pressure, cured, trimmed to size, and finished into engineered boards that can be cut, drilled, routed, screwed, nailed, painted, laminated, veneered, wallpapered, and even carved into intricate architectural screens.