Entrepreneurship Education for Sustainable Production of Bio-Based Products: A Case Study

Due to the unemployment rate in South Africa, it was decided to incorporate entrepreneurship in the assignment given to the students registered for FRT 3142, a module concerned with wood products manufacturing. The main aspects of the module deal with the processing of structural timber and composite products, which are produced mainly on a large scale, requiring a significant capital investment for log breakdown machinery, transportation, and labour. Students were given an assignment where the business-oriented questions were standardised but were assigned different products to investigate. The main question was structured as such: “You are about to start a business. As a forestry student, you have decided that your product will be made from wood or a forest-based resource/ingredient. For your assigned product, explain the steps you will take to make and sell the product”. Other questions involved students evaluating the resources and the feasibility of accessing such resources, such as startup capital and equipment, and assessing their potential customers. The assigned products, which could be produced on a small startup scale with less capital investment, were eucalyptus oil, pencils, toothpicks, chairs, chopping boards, pallets, logs houses, wine barrels, palm oil, rubber, hardwood tables, bamboo products, broomsticks, couches, charcoal, doors, windows, wine corks, woven baskets, and pellets. The students expressed that the presentations allowed them to learn about the different products that were not assigned to them. This was a success because the curriculum could not cover all the manufacturing of forest and wood products; however, the students educated each other through student presentations.