Guadua Bamboo Plantations Program
Pioneer in Nicaraguan Bamboo Reforestation!
Jan Van Bilsen & Nicaraguan farmers
Ever since Jan Van Bilsen (co-owner of Guadua Bamboo S.A.) started to work full time on bamboo matters in Nicaragua, the idea for reforestation with bamboo has always been his main priority and focus. As an award wining Belgian filmmaker, Jan witnessed first hand the destruction of tropical rain forests and the impact of civil wars in Central America. During his career as a filmmaker Jan established true friendships and excellent relationships with local communities, which he is now helping to improve their future by teaching them about the advantages of cultivating and working with bamboo. Jan Van Bilsen and Guadua Bamboo are known for their down to earth and realistic approach, which results in mutual respect between the farmer communities and our company Guadua Bamboo.
1. Nicaragua Bamboo Investment Plan
The natural habitat for our Guadua Bamboo in Nicaragua is the Atlantic Coast region, because of the quantity of rain and the type of soil. So, we have chosen 3 places where we will start planting bamboo.
- Waslala (Red Arrow): 250 Km. from Managua. NE/Nicaragua
- El Jobo Rio Blanco (Blue Arrow): 200 Km. from Managua. Central Nicaragua.
- Muelle de los Bueyes (Green Arrow): 275 Km. from Managua. Close to the city of Rama (Seaport).
We choose those places because of the presence of natural grown bamboo and the availability of high quality parcels. Guadua Bamboo itself, also owns various bamboo plantations in this area.
Each Manzana (1.73 Acres) sells for: US$ 5,500.00
This includes:
- Land (1 manzana) with a Certified Title registered in your name or your company’s name. This land is located on one of our designated locations, best suited to grow bamboo.
- Lawyer and topographer fees.
- 500 new Guadua bamboo seedlings, skillfully planted. If we plant bamboo in 2010, we can harvest the first ones in 2014 and from there on, every year, without re-planting! In 2014, we can harvest 20,000 Linear Meters of solid 6“ building material from each and every Manzana we planted in 2010. That generates a passive income every year from 2014 on until 2110 …
- Full time maintenance (fertilizing, cleaning, pruning) and consultancy. Guadua Bamboo makes sure all seedlings are carefully planted, fertilized, irrigated, and weeds are eliminated. Existing groves are pruned, and cleared from over-mature culms to ensure a healthy bamboo plantation. It is in Guadua Bamboo's best interest to maintain their investors plantations since we buy the bamboo from you.
Just watch your money grow!
At the end of the fourth year you will earn a passive income of approximately US$ 1,200.00 per Manzana every year. These profits are calculated by the amount of bamboo "trees" that can be harvested per year per manzana. Guadua Bamboo than purchases and harvests your crop and distributes the cured and dried poles to its clientele worldwide.
2. What kind of bamboo do we grow?
Guadua Aculeata Seedling
For every bamboo plantation, we use exclusively the seedlings of two of the best bamboo species worldwide. They are Guadua Angustifolia and Guadua Aculeata. Both species are native to Central America. We are blessed with having them in Nicaragua and were even more blessed with the flowering of those bamboos in 2008-2009.
Flowering occurs only ONCE in a lifetime for bamboos. After that, they slowly fade away and die. Growing bamboo from seeds, will give bamboo a life span of 100 years, and guarantee us a healthy, strong and vigorous bamboo plantation.
3. As an investor, do I start from scratch?
No you don't. We have selected a large area where patches of bamboo groves already exist. First of all to make sure bamboo actually grows well in the area and secondly to give the investor the opportunity to use his bamboo immediately, to build his own house or to experiment with the material.
To local farmers, these bamboo groves are still considered as "weeds" because their lack of knowledge. Land is much more profitable for the average farmer to grow corn, beans, raise cattle, etc. This results in rapid deforestation.
Example of a Guadua Bamboo Plantation Property
To turn this deforestation around we encourage investors to plant more bamboo (which is included in the bamboo plantations package price when you buy a piece of property true Guadua Bamboo).
4. What documents come with the purchase of the bamboo plantation?
When buying land in Nicaragua, you must obtain following documents (Guadua Bamboo takes care of this):
1. “Escritura de propiedad” and “Certificado Registral”, registered in the Registro Publico de las Propiedads. On this document, your piece of real property is described and has a specific number. It is also most important to obtain an "Escritura Publico" (domain title), instead of an Escritura Positorio, which means you're only the occupier of the land, not the owner.
2. “Plano”, registered in the Catastro office, is a document that graphically depicts the site information. Guadua Bamboo also hires a topographer (or surveyor) to make a plano of the property (properties in rural areas seldom come with such a plano).
3. “Libertad de Gravamen”, registered at the Registro Publico office: a document that ensures there are no liens, debts or back taxes owned against the property. (This is from special importance due to the fact that a lot of property was confiscated by the government in the 80's and that on some property titles are still claims running from the rightful owners.)
4. After the transaction, your property must be registered in the Registro Publico de la Propiedad. There you receive the property title and from then on you can consider yourself as the legal owner of the piece of land you bought.
5. What about property taxes in Nicaragua?
Property taxes should be paid every year to the Municipal Government, which is 1% of the value of the property, this is NOT included in our bamboo plantations package price. Guadua bamboo keeps all investor details on file in order to notify investors by email. Once the tax transfer is established by the investor we'll send a copy of the receipt.
6. As an investor, am I bound to Guadua Bamboo?
No, you are completely free to do whatever you want with or on your bamboo plantation. From the moment your buy and sign your documents the property is yours. You can, at any point in time, decide to sell your bamboo plantations, harvest your own bamboo, etc. No risk, no obligations.
7. What kind of investors do you target?
Theoretically, every investor is more then welcome to invest in our bamboo plantations program, but we prefer:
- Investors with a passion for bamboo, who would love to contribute and share ideas to improve traditional bamboo building techniques (which can than results in a commercial cooperation of individual businesses promoted on our website).
- Investors who want to create a passive income by selling their crop to Guadua Bamboo, which we harvest, cure, dry and store for export to our client base.
- Investors who truly believe in bamboo reforestation and our vision. Brokers or investors with the intention of re-selling these properties in volume for other reasons then our program, we kindly ask to look for other, and better suited opportunities.
We rather create an innovative cooperation and a strong base of bamboo growers for the future, than spending time selling "real estate" (which is not the focus of our company).
8. How many private investors do you allow?
At this point in time, we have not set any limitations, the sky is the limit. Since our company is growing fast, we will need more and more bamboo to supply the demand.
9. Is there a bulk discount?
There is no bulk discount, since the package price is calculated on a very low to non-profit base. However, if investors decide to buy more then 5 manzana's we reimburse the investor for his flight ticket when he comes to Nicaragua to sign all document and exchange property titles (max. reimbursed value of 500$).
10. What about carbon credits and carbon trading?
Guadua bamboo is not a big fan of carbon trading activities. The fact that developing countries have to leave their forest untouched while developed countries can just continue to pollute (as long as they pay) doesn't really fit our overall vision on green solutions to stop global warming. Bamboo's rapid growth and the fact that we can harvest on a yearly basis without re-planting or eliminating an entire grove, only stimulate our believes that by teaching communities how to work with the material is far better then just selling "air".
However, investors are free to use their bamboo plantations the way they think is best, we just don't provide that extra service of "carbon trading".
11. How are your payout's done?
Investors receive annual payment (by wire transfer) when we harvest crop from their bamboo plantation. We monitor all properties and notify the investor when the time is right to harvest.
12. Is my yearly return guaranteed?
Yes and no. No, because we do not bind any investor with a contract to Guadua Bamboo. Yes because we need bamboo for our rapidly expanding export operations. Therefore we need to harvest your bamboo and we pay for every bamboo "tree" we harvest from your bamboo plantations.
* The USA last year imported US$ 2.6 BILLION in bamboo products.
13. Can I see the properties before I buy?
Of course you can, in fact we strongly encourage to come and visit us prior to purchasing your bamboo plantation. That way we can show you first hand where we are located and touch the bamboos! People are often suspicious or at least careful when they read a "sales pitch" online, we rather not spend hours a day sending emails back and forth trying to convince investors! That's why: Come and see for yourself, you are most welcome!
14. Are plots easy accessible by vehicle?
Yes, we selected areas where roads are fairly good. This is important to ensure smooth transportation of container loads towards the main ports at the Atlantic and Pacific coast of Nicaragua.
Example of the road access near the plantations in Nicaragua
15. Is Guadua Bamboo S.A. a Nicaraguan company?
Yes Guadua Bamboo S.A. is a Nicaragua based and registered company. Owners are Jan Van Bilsen and Stéphane Schröder, who live and work full time in Central America for respectively 28 and 5 years.
16. Do you work with the Nicaraguan government?
Yes we do. We have very good and close relationships with the following Government Ministries in Nicaragua:
- INAFOR (Instituto Nacional Forestal)
- MAGFOR (Ministerio Agropecuario y Forestal)
- MARENA (Ministerio del Ambiente y los Recursos Naturales)
17. How socially responsible is Guadua Bamboo?
All earnings from our the Guadua Bamboo Plantations Program flow back to the local community. Guadua Bamboo itself does not make profits by selling these bamboo plantations. Although Guadua Bamboo is a real company, our profits are generated by producing and selling bamboo products, such as bamboo poles, matting boards, furniture, artisan work, etc.
Jan Van Bilsen is showing Ruben and his family the latest bamboo video we made on the plantations.
Since the nurseries, maintenance and harvesting is all done by our network of farmers in the area (paid by, and under supervision of Guadua Bamboo), all funds from the property package is used to pay local farmers an above average salary. This to motivate local farmers NOT to fall back into cultivating traditional agricultural crops and deforestation.
18. Is it safe to travel in Nicaragua?
In recent years Nicaragua is considered a safer travel destination then Costa Rica, here is a great article that discusses this in dept: Is Nicaragua's Negative Image Justified?
19. Why growing bamboo?
Every year, precious tropical hard woods and forests are being cut down, slashed and burned. Restoring those natural forests would take several generations, therefore we need to find faster solutions that can substitute conventional wood application and continue to convert CO2 into oxygen. The answer is Bamboo!
Bamboo belongs to the family of grasses and is one of the fastest growing plants on earth. It is NOT a tree, but quite simply grass… In just 1 growing season, stems reach their full height. It takes another 3 years, however, for the bamboos to harden and reach maturity.
Every Manzana with bamboo produces 30,000 liters of water/year and has an "underground network” root system, some 20 Km (12 miles) long. This same network enriches and protects the soil from erosion, giving life and nutrients to the top layer.
Bamboo also captures CO2 and converts it into oxygen, substantially more than regular trees. Recent studies indicate that the potential for atmospheric carbon dioxide fixation in the first six years of Guadua's growth from new sowings is 54 metric tons per hectare.
Bamboo has been classified as having over 1500 different uses, including fences, furniture, laminates, music instruments, food products and every part of a building. Asian cultures have a saying that a man is born in a bamboo cradle and goes away in a bamboo coffin. Everything in between is possible with bamboo.
In Latin America, structures of the native timber Guadua bamboo are popular with both rich and poor. A good example is the work of Colombian Architect Simon Velez. He - more than anyone else maybe - has popularized the use of Guadua for house building.
20. What is the ultimate goal?
We strongly believe in the ecological and economical strengths of growing bamboo as a substitute for wood, as a natural building material and a producer of oxygen and water.
When planting bamboo in an orderly way, we can harvest it in a never-ending cycle of beautiful, straight, strong, earthquake-resistant poles.
We do know that we can build sustainable and affordable houses, bridges, schools and hotels and make a fair amount of money as well. Remember that your little Manzana produces enough bamboo to build almost 30 low income houses every year!
By teaching and promoting the possibilities with bamboo in a certain region, local communities will copy our activities, which should result into a large bamboo community center or cooperation. Obviously we cannot do this alone, therefore we ask passionate investors to join our efforts and also teach and share their knowledge in their particular field of interest.
Our ultimate goal is to set up a cooperation that includes all kinds of private investors who are passionately involved with bamboo and all it's application. Guadua Bamboo S.A. itself owns property in the exact same areas, and with the help of a strong coop we could further work on innovating and improving traditional techniques in bamboo preservation, construction, propagation etc.
Due to our market position and our top positions on the internet, we then advertise all activities of our investors on our website who on their turn can turn their passion into a full time and profitable business. Guadua Bamboo concentrates its efforts in education, promotions and export of the raw material, while we help and stimulate investors to invest their energy into innovative activities. All combined and promoted by Guadua Bamboo Central America.
Contact us if you also want to be a part of the Guadua Bamboo Plantations Program in Nicaragua.