WESTMORELAND, Jamaica—When Category 5 Hurricane Melissa tore across Jamaica, flattening fields and uprooting livelihoods, one crop stood its ground.

In test plots across western Jamaica, bamboo clumps bent under ferocious winds, absorbed torrential rain, and then within weeks began to recover.

“For an industry still in its formative stages, the storm became an unplanned but powerful demonstration of bamboo’s resilience and its potential role in Jamaica’s climate-smart economic future,” pointed out David Stedeford, chief executive officer and founder of Bamboo Bioproducts Ltd, Jamaica’s first large-scale bamboo pulp mill planned for Friendship, Westmoreland.

According to a release from the company, it is cultivating in excess of 25,000 acres of farmland across the island to produce bamboo pulp as part of an approximately US$500 million investment in Jamaica, centred in Westmoreland.

Stedeford said though the mill itself is still to be constructed, Hurricane Melissa served as a real-world stress test for the project’s assumptions and designs, both agricultural and industrial.

“Melissa reinforced our confidence in bamboo as a resilient agricultural system,” Stedeford said. “Our test plots were exposed to extreme conditions consistent with a Category 5 storm, yet the bamboo clumps remained intact and recovered quickly.”

Unlike small experimental trials, the company said these plots were planted and managed as commercial bamboo farms, offering insights into how the crop performs at scale.

The results were encouraging, said Stedeford. Strong root systems helped stabilise soil, flexible culms reduced breakage, and bamboo’s rapid regrowth ensured the integrity of future feedstock supply.

“Hurricane Melissa gave us a clear demonstration of what this crop can withstand,” said Kirk Raymond, agronomist and field-logistics officer at Bamboo Bioproducts Ltd.

“The bamboo along the edges of the fields experienced the most wind shear, but the interior growth areas held strong. When we went back in to measure and account for losses, what we saw was a very good showing in terms of yield and overall crop stability.”

According to Raymond, post-storm assessments took nearly three weeks and included clearing fallen bamboo from roadways, cleaning planting rows, and weighing material to calculate losses. What emerged was an unexpected advantage: much of the bamboo felled by the storm was still suitable for industrial processing.

“Based on quality alone, the material we assessed would fall in the 80 to 90 per cent range for mill throughput,” he explained. “In many ways, Melissa acted like a pre-harvest exercise rather than a disaster.”

Raymond pointed out that the storm also reinforced the value of long-term crop planning.

“Bamboo grown on a four-year rotation becomes significantly more resistant to extreme weather after its second year, a factor that limited disruption despite the hurricane’s intensity,” he said.

For a country exposed to increasingly intense storms linked to climate change as with many parts of the globe, those attributes matter, said Stedeford. Agriculture and manufacturing are often among the hardest-hit sectors after hurricanes, he observed.

Bamboo, he said, is positioning itself as a bridge between the two, an agricultural crop that can support industrial production while withstanding climatic shocks.

While the storm tested the fields, it also validated strategic decisions behind the mill’s development, said Stedeford, as he disclosed that the planned mill site did not flood during Hurricane Melissa, confirming the accuracy of earlier hydrological and site selection assessments.

“Following Melissa, we revisited elements of the mill design, which was already engineered for Category 5 wind loads and seismic events, to incorporate additional learnings around wind exposure and extreme weather scenarios,” he explained.

Refinements were made to structural detailing, construction-phase planning, and shutdown procedures, strengthening resilience both during construction and once the facility becomes operational.

Yet, for the company, resilience was not just about infrastructure or crops; it was about people. As the hurricane approached, operations were paused and staff were instructed to stay home with their families. After the storm passed, the company’s immediate focus shifted to welfare.

“Our priority was people, always,” Stedeford said. “Immediately after the storm, our focus shifted to welfare checks and restoring contact with our teams in the west. We provided immediate support for food and personal hygiene needs and worked through our local leadership to coordinate assistance where it was most needed.”

That people-first approach, he noted, was critical in maintaining trust and morale during a period of widespread disruption.

It also reinforced the company’s broader philosophy of operating as part of a community, not apart from it. The company also committed funding to support neighbouring communities as they stabilised.