Friday 16 June 2023
CEO Graeme Black was delighted to meet personally in London with an old mentor and friend – The Dean of the prestigious London Business School.
Dean François Ortalo-Magné was welcoming former students for the 40th Anniversary of their two-year Master’s Course 1981-83. On receiving Graeme’s latest Model 4A Lignor LBS co-branded biro, the Dean ran out of the room saying he would be back shortly.
The Dean returned with a Lignor Model 2 and a Lignor patented Cross Laminated Strand Timber (CLST®) coaster that Graeme had given him in Melbourne during an earlier visit to Melbourne. The Model 2 limited edition model made by Graeme himself – the same model he gave to Sir David Attenborough at a BBC Flora and Fauna co-hosted presentation on the “War against Plastics” In London.
In addition to the Lignor LBS 40th Anniversary of MSc 1983 biro, Graeme was keen to leave the Dean with a larger Lignor sample – a CLST® chopping board also made of independently accredited eucalyptus which he had carefully crafted in his workshop and finished in beeswax. The Lignor branded items are intended as beautiful, practical reminders of the role that stranded engineered wood can play in the race to save our planet in the face of Climate Change.
Graeme advised the Dean that Lignor had already made a veneered 7 year-old plantation eucalyptus Lignor Engineered Strand Board stronger than the traditional 70 year-old tropical rainforest plywood floors used in container floors.
During the meeting, in front of some 20+ Alumni of the MSc course in 1983, the two men discussed the evolution of LBS course content in recent years. Dean François told the Alumni that since the 1980s, the school had developed and presented many more courses on sustainability and entrepreneurship. LBS also ranks highly for sustainability research. In January 2023, Analysis of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)-related content (2018-21) in FT50 journals ranked it in the top two worldwide.
The Dean said that he was pleased to be a promoter of Lignor’s stranded engineered wood technology as a key agent of change in sustainability and as a way of helping abating climate change and deforestation. He understood Lignor’s Green and REDD®+ trademark before taking another 7 LBS/ Lignor biros to use in his role as ambassador.
Thanking him for his support, Graeme said “I’m heartened to see there’s been a change of emphasis in teaching business. It’s good to know that courses are moving from a purely bottom line perspective to focus more on ESG. We’re quickly running out of time to fight climate change and make vital changes to entrenched business practices that have such an enormous influence on our planet’s wellbeing.
Lignor has the potential to reach and abate some of the 57% of mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions by offering a sustainable substitute for traditional high embodied energy construction products. It is also a sustainable substitute for illegal timber, often the first unsustainable harvest of Deforestation and Land Degradation ”
