Talented students

Cibening Village (located adjecent to the GoldTeak Plantation) is producing some very talented students!

In April, several students from Cibeureum Elementery School, entered a competition in Kecamatan Bantar Gebang (kecamatan means sub-district). 

Five local students competed in mathematic, science, reading, writing, poetry reading, and art.  

   Andri won first place followed by Dede in second place for the painting      category  His paint to the right  is about The Green Village, he drew trees, fish pond with ducks and a mountain as a background.

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Abdul Hikmat won first place for the poetry reading category and he also won third place in the science category. 

Patonah won first place for creative writing and a second place for reading, writing and mathematic category. 

And finally Yusuf won a first place for reading, wtiting and mathematic.

It was the first time that the school sent so many students to the competition,  previously we had sent only one student for the poetry reading competition. 

Cibeureum Elementary school has 71 students (from grade 1 to grade 6).  The school very isolated being that Cibening Village is located two kilometers from the main road.  

The students spend their free time playing football (soccer), flying kites, and going to the school to read story books or magazine they enjoy spending their time together reading.   

Once a month, GoldTeak manager Dewi Herawati, visits the school to discuss with the teachers and principle the progress of the students.  Dewi spends time sharing stories (which is a favorite activity) about various topics ranging from fables about good living to science.   Sometimes Dewi brings a map to show them where the stories originated.  Incidently, they have recently learned the difference between butter and margarine!

Local Ambulance Service

Local ambulance service. Kasa was dehydrated and had to be taken to the hospital. The doctor prescribed bed rest and absolutely no walking, so the local villagers transported him by foot on the two kilometer walk to the plantation.

Quick view about Insect Pests at teaks;

There are tree well-known pest of teak;


1. Caterpillars of moth, Hyblaea puera, commonly known as the teak defoliator, feed on the foliage during the early part of growth season, soon after flushing. It is believed to cause on or more total defoliation events every year in most teak areas. The teak defoliator is a migrant pest, with shifting foci of high-density infestation during the early outbreak period, which coincides with pre-monsoon rains. This is followed by widespread infestation and sudden disappearance of the pest population.



2. The teak leaf skeletoniser Eutectona machaeralis is also present in plantations in Java. This caterpillar feed on the leaves, leaving the major veins intact, hence the name ‘skeletoniser’.and grasshopper.

3. The third notable pest of teak in Java is the termite Neoterme tectonae. Popularly known as “Inger-inger”, this wood-dwelling termite hollows out portions of stem and branches. Usually, the external symptom, swellings of the trunk and branches, become visible on 3-5 year after the initiation of attack. The termites occupy crevices within the swollen stem. Trees over 3 years old are attacked but the symptoms appear only later. It is a serious problem in Java. Thinning of infested trees is the only practical method to reduce the incidence of attack, although methods such as introduction of fumigants.

The following teak pests are of lesser importance. The ambrosia beetle, Xyleborus destruens, attacks the trunk of living teak trees making branching tunnel that extend into the heartwood. The teak beehole borer, Xyleutes ceramica, which usually infests a small proportion of sampling in an 18-month old teak plantation. The grasshopper, valanga nigricornis causes sporadic defoliation and white grubs damage seedling in nurseries. Diseases; Teak is fairly resistant to diseases, although several pathogenic organisms have been recorded. A few diseases affect young trees in taungnya stems, notably, an unidentified root wilt and stem cancer, Corticum salmonicolor (pink disease).

Parid's Family

Teak View

The visual difference.....

It is amazing to see that our model is working!

The 3P: People, Planet and Profit concepts encourages us to make business decisions with a balance of the people related to our projects and the environment while enhancing our profit.

A core concept of GoldTeak is to hire guardians to care for our trees from the beginning. Most plantations put the trees in the ground and then leave them to grow knowing that even if a small portion of the trees grow properly they will profit. However, if you look at the top photo you will note that these trees are significantly smaller than the trees in the second photo. It is hard to believe that these trees were planted at the same time and are on land adjecent to the obviously healthy and large trees at the GoldTeak Bumisari Plantation.

Our 3P motivation can be described as the following:

1. Jobs!:  Need we say more?  Giving local families housing and jobs actually helps the entire village... the workers spend their money in the village creating more income and growing their local economy in a healthy fashion (which will hopefully also reduce the possibility of theft when our trees become large enough to sell!).

2.  Spend more on People : Having guardians requires investment long before a profit is seen, however, in envisioning the long term results we can see that after 20 years the land in the second and last photos will produce a much healthier profit!.

3.  Larger trees mean more water and less CO2:  Having larger and healthier trees allow the land to hold more water and also sequester more CO2, helping our environment combat Global warming!

Sunny day during the rainy season

The children of Cibening village are happy to catch a ride with Zaini (GoldTeak's local manager). The walk from the main road is a long one and the children have to walk this daily to go to middle school. Fortunatly the sun is shining and the road appears drys, as during the rainy season the road is often six-inches deep with mud.



GoldTeak is primarly a teak plantation, however, we multi-crop and have planted a percentage of our land with fruit trees like the orange, durian and guava trees that you see in the photos. Fruit trees mature more quickly than teak trees and allows us to start creating an income from the land to offset the long term costs of maintaining the teak wood.