MAINTENANCE
The Bamboo
Alternative
A new synthetic product is demonstrating that it can
outperform bamboo and doesn’t need to be imported
By Pat Rediger
Bamboo has long been used to
mark trails and runs in the ski
industry due to its many ben-efits
– flexibility, lightweight,
durability and strength. However, de-spite
these benefits, ski operators have
begun to steer clear from the product
in recent years.
John Jacobs, director of sales and de-velopment
with Reliable Racing Sup-ply,
has first-hand experience regard-ing
the reasons why. He remembers few
years ago the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Services (APHIS) branch of
the United States Department of Ag-riculture
demanded that his company
destroy a 40-foot container of bamboo
due to moisture found in the container.
Reliable Racing wasn’t the only com-pany
experiencing these types of con-cerns.
A year later another company
was forced to recall several thousand
bamboo poles from the field due to
APHIS non-compliance. Other bam-boo
orders were refused entry into the
United States because the wood hadn’t
been thoroughly fumigated and dried,
and could propagate, or because the
adhesive used on the tape that held
bundles of bamboo together could pre-vent
the wood from being fumigated
on this side of the ocean.
American bamboo suppliers are no
longer willing to risk importing con-tainers
of bamboo only to be flagged
at the point of entry by APHIS as be-ing
non-compliant, which leaves them
with the choice of either returning
the shipment to its point of origin or
to incinerate the contents, both at
great expense.
That led Jacobs down a path to create
a new product to replace bamboo. Reli-able
Racing now produces and distrib-utes
Syn-Boo, a synthetic bamboo that
can outperform bamboo and doesn’t
need to be imported.
“We’ve asked the question for years:
Where does the bamboo go and why do
the ski areas reorder every year? It was
time for a modern, more durable prod-uct
to enter the market,” said Jacobs.
Syn-Boo does not rot, lasts longer
and is less expensive to ship
compared to bamboo
Syn-Boo comes in a standard length of 88” which provides up to
16” into the piste with 6’ above snow surface
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