Coconut countries burn enough building material every year to frame
13 million homes.
We convert plantation waste into binderless structural board at production scale. The machine is running in the Philippines.
Structural board, from the half of the coconut that burns.
The husk, the shell and the fronds come off the tree whether anyone wants them or not. Pressed under heat, the fibre’s own lignin binds it into a load-bearing board with no added resin. The board is a substitute for the imported plywood the building trade already buys, made where the coconut grows.
The unit that makes it is a set of enclosed, automated containers placed near the centre of a plantation. It powers itself on the residue it presses, through a biomass gasifier we re-engineered to run on it, so it needs no grid connection and no paved road. On an archipelago, the factory goes to the fibre. The process is proprietary.
Three reasons it stopped. Three things we built.
Binderless coconut board was made in a laboratory in 2004 and on a pilot line in 2005. No production plant followed.
The board could not be made to a building standard twice.
Ours is made at production scale, and the board that was tested is the board the system makes.
Drawn from the grid, the energy the process needs made the board uneconomic at market prices.
The unit powers itself, through a biomass gasifier we re-engineered end to end to run on the residue it presses.
The husk could not be hauled to a central factory across an archipelago.
Enclosed, automated containers near the centre of the plantation. The factory goes to the fibre.
Fifteen years: eight on the research and the containerised platform, then the board, developed at our research facility in the United States from 2019 and proved at production scale at our Innovation Center in the Philippines in 2026. Equipment we designed and built; a process held as a trade secret.
The board holds a building standard.
The Philippine Department of Science and Technology tested the board per ASTM D 1037. The results meet the ISO 16893 load-bearing grade, and its swelling in water falls within the standard’s humid-conditions class. Fire tested per EN ISO 11925-2 at DOST’s forest products institute: no ignition, no flaming droplets.
3.8
times the internal bond the ANSI A208.1 M-2 grade requires: 1.51 MPa
6.64%
swelling in water over 24 hours, within the humid-conditions class
1,643
kg of CO2e held per cubic metre of board, on the coconut recipe
Carbon figure from an independent life-cycle assessment by Dr Khaled Madkour, structured along ISO 14040 phases.
What one commercial unit will set off, each year.
- Structural board
- 10,000 cubic metres
- Homes framed
- about 1,000
- Rooftop solar on those homes
- about 3 MW, financed as part of the kit house
- CO2e held in the board
- 16,430 tonnes
Figures for one commercial unit, from the Globe-Eco model.
Kit houses first.
The board frames kit houses designed for public housing. A demonstration home is in build at our Innovation Center. Our next steps are the first kit house and the first two commercial units.
Who we work with.
- Philippine Department of Science and Technology. Materials testing.
- Philippine Coconut Authority. Collaborator.
- Confederation of Coconut Farmers’ Organizations of the Philippines, a national confederation of coconut farmer organizations. A feedstock framework, in negotiation.
- Dr Khaled Madkour, independent sustainability and LCA consultant. The life-cycle assessment.
- USF Patel College of Global Sustainability, including Dr T.H. Culhane. Collaborator.
Write to us.
Government
The board is priced to compete for cost-capped public housing procurement, and the units classify as portable equipment under Philippine rules. Officials across the coconut belt and in the United States can request a briefing.
Write to usPartners and cooperatives
We go where communities sign on. Farmer organizations, cooperatives and local governments that want a unit in their catchment can start the conversation here.
Write to usPress
The facts on this page are the ones we stand behind, and the test results carry their sources. For interviews and images, write to us.
Write to usCapital partners
The Innovation Center runs end to end, residue to power to finished board, and is open to serious capital partners by arrangement.
Request a briefingWho is building it.
Binderless coconut board was a published research goal for twenty years: made in a laboratory in 2004, run on a pilot line in 2005, and never taken to production. Our team took it there, with equipment it designed and built, a process it holds as a trade secret, and a platform that goes to the plantation instead of bringing the plantation to a factory.
Matthew Grecsek
Founder & President
Designed the Globe-Eco system: the architecture of a manufacturing platform that deploys into remote plantations with no grid and no paved road, the process and energy requirements it had to meet, and the economic model under which one unit pays for itself and sets off the next. He left Silicon Valley software in 2010 for his family’s coconut plantations in the Philippines. Before that: Agenetics, an early artificial-intelligence platform he founded in 2000; IBM; Lockheed Martin, on the Joint Strike Fighter programme; First Union; Publix Super Markets.
Robert Knighton
Co-Founder
The Innovation Center runs because Robert built it: the equipment, assembled and integrated with the Filipino team; the energy plant he designed and engineered to run the line on coconut residue; and the board itself, developed through thousands of pressings under his lead. A master builder and engineer, he designed the kit houses the board frames and leads the build programme in the Philippines.
Follow the work.
News of the first kit house, by email.