Big Tree Farms chocolate factory during construction. Photo courtesy of Big Tree Farms.
Built on Bali and inspired by Indonesia’s traditional culture, Big Tree Farms has completed what’s considered the largest modern bamboo commercial structure in the world.
The new three-story bamboo facility is now home to the company’s chocolate factory, a warehouse, a retail store with a cafe, the corporate headquarters, office space, meeting areas, and an events center.
Big Tree Farms chocolate factory being built. Photo by Big Tree Farms.
The events center will include a commercial kitchen for hosting cooking classes and preparing the famous Firefly Supper Series.
“The series is a chance for framers, drivers, officer employees, and us to all get together and put on a delicious diner using what we grow and present it to tourists and locals in a beautiful setting – our farm,” said Ben Ripple, who is co-CEO of Big Tree Farms, along with Fredrick Shilling.
Telling the story of how the new facility came into being, Ripple said, “The goal wasn’t to build the world’s largest bamboo commercial structure. It was just the result of building what we needed and wanted to have under one roof. We broke ground in January 2011, and it has been absolutely incredible to watch. Our architect Pete Celovsky had the challenge of taking our vision and making it a reality.”
“Once the architectural drawings were drafted, they were handed over to Pak Cantor, our Balinese master bamboo builder. He’s around 65 years old and has been building bamboo structures for most of his life,” Ripple continued.
“To build anything from scratch always takes time, planning, patience, and creativity,” said Shilling, adding that, “To build a structure that has never been built before, which is out of non-traditional commercial building material, and on a monumental scale, has required all of us to erase the concept of what cannot be done; ask how can we do it, and make it a reality.”
Bamboo is a traditional building material in many tropical regions and has been used for thousands of years as a versatile and sustainable building material.
“In structural engineering tests, bamboo has a higher tensile strength than many alloys of steel and a higher compressive strength than many mixtures of concrete. It even has a higher strength to weight ration than graphite. Also, because of bamboo’s strength and flexibility, bamboo structures have withstood 9.0 magnitude earthquakes,” said the company.
Among the environmentally friendly aspects of this facility is that it has two rainwater collection tanks that provide water for non-food production purposes, as well as two black water treatment ponds that that will provide water for the bathrooms.
As for the aesthetics of the place, the company has planted a big tree in the middle of the factory – encased in glass – that will grow through the roof.
In producing their chocolate, Big Tree Farms works with about 2,000 farmers just in Bali alone, and almost 1,000 farmers in the Aceh region of Sumatra, where the 2005 tsunami hit. The company says that the new factory will ensure that nearly all of the farmers’ cacao (chocolate bean) production is processed in Bali, keeping as much of the cacao income in the local community as possible.
Big Tree Farms also manufactures and markets other organic and sustainably produced products such as coconut palm sugar, coconut water, and raw cashews. The company works with community growers to increase fair pricing, local processing (keeping the money local), and education programs.
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