A little over a year ago, Mario González Bahamonde discovered “plastic wood” through the Internet; however, what turned that search into a real project was his experience manufacturing wood and metal furniture for more than 20 years as a member of the Cuban Fund of Cultural Assets.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- This data is valid to ensure that his curiosity was not the same as “the one that killed the cat,” and it was a reason enough for him to prepare to manufacture an extruder, an industrial machine in charge of processing polymers through pressing, fusion, molding, pressure, and pushing of the materials to obtain a new mold.

Thus, the second Cuban project that today ventures into obtaining the eco-wood - and the only one of its kind in the east of the country - was born; a novel proposal that seeks greater ecological and financial sustainability in times when innovation is a word of order for the economic and social development of the country.

González's decision allowed him to substitute expensive raw materials and start a previously unknown venture; hence, he decided to surround himself with a team of young and established professionals from different areas to start the project, registered, and marketed under the name of Plásticos Bahamonde (Bahamonde Plastics).

“The team includes a technologist, economist, publicist, personnel directly linked to production and I, who am a geologist by profession, an alliance that is a laboratory of ideas when it comes to perfecting the mixture to obtain wood from plastic, a process that took me almost a year to materialize,” González Behamonde told the Cuban News Agency.

While he was speaking, it was necessary to take notes and record, take pictures of the catalogs and ask, ask a lot, because not every day you have the luxury of interviewing someone who makes an extruder and with it quickly and continuously acquires different designs, speeding up the industrial recycling process, and making the most of the raw material supplied by the Las Tunas Raw Materials Company.

Therefore, it was necessary to know about their motivations, to which González Bahamonde responded without hesitation: “First, there is the need to clean the environment through a new and noble purpose with the ecosystems, to respond to a specific need on the use of the innovation in the search for cheaper and more sustainable solutions, and also the implementation of innovative procedures such as the circular economy.

The project is in tune with the most current trends in the financial world and it is the young Yoan Silva Sánchez who is in charge of implementing the non-linear process of reincorporation of disused products to the industry and thus to a new useful life, achievement in which he is in constant link with the University of Las Tunas.

Silva Sánchez explains that with the generalization of this initiative, practically one hundred percent of the spheres of the economy could benefit, i.e. tourism, agriculture, the construction materials industry, and the home, not counting the clear potentialities that these products have to become exportable items.

The truth is that the world of eco-wood is fascinating and, if anyone has doubts, it is enough to talk for a few minutes with the engineer Emilio Enrique Guerrero to be convinced; he is the technologist of Plásticos Bahamonde and, although he fully masters the most complex mechanisms of the small industry, he makes understood in simple words: plastic wood has advantages in the face of humidity, it is more rigid, resistant, and is not affected by fungi and insects.

All this science is then translated thanks to the ingenuity and creativity of Yuri Cutiño Téllez, a skilled publicist who in a few months has been in charge of presenting the project to the people of Las Tunas and directing its communication alliances in promising agreements with the Business Group of Logistics of the Ministry of Agriculture (GELMA) and the Cuban Fund for Cultural Assets (FCBC), besides 16 letters of intent that have already been signed with important entities of the Cuban business system.

Now, Plásticos Bahamonde has its workshops on premises leased from the Universal Company of Las Tunas; the contract allows them to experiment there with greater freedom, to organize themselves better, to achieve a higher level of response to the demands of prioritized sectors and orders.

Picnic tables, sun chairs, industrial pallets, stevedores, garbage cans, park benches, among other products are possible through the initiative of the non-state sector that offers, among its advantages, the delivery of one hundred percent recoverable productions, easily maintenance, with custom designs that exhibit high-quality standards based on strength, functionality, and flexibility.

It's a fact! Plastic wood is produced in Las Tunas and although the economic scenario is complex, the most recent provisions to stimulate the development of the country with the creation of micro, small and medium-sized companies shed light on a context of open doors for simple people and great ideas, such as what today Plásticos Bahamonde promote.