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THE ALMANAC · A YEAR ON THE LAND
FOLIO 01 / 08 YEAR THIRTY-TWO SARDARSHAHAR · IN
I Folio I · The Almanac

Furniture is, in the end, stored sunlight.

A year on the land at Sardarshahar — counted in kilowatts under the desert sun, in rings of plantation timber, in shavings returned to fuel, in eight hundred pairs of hands kept whole. What follows is our annual reckoning.

50
 MW
Renewable capacity, on the books
100
%
Plantation & FSC-line timber
ZERO
 to landfill
Sawdust, scrap, shaving, all returned
800
+ hands
And the families behind them
THE SUN'S WORK · SOLAR LEDGER
FOLIO 02 / 08 50 MW · GRID TIE
II Folio II · The Sun's Work

Fifty megawatts of quiet,
running every saw in the house.

On a high terrace in the Bikaner desert sits the family's other discipline — a fifty-megawatt solar field that has, since commissioning, returned more electrons to the grid than the manufactory has ever drawn from it.

Every plank that leaves Sardarshahar is, by accounting if not by wire, run on light. The arithmetic is unromantic and easy to verify: 50 MW of installed capacity, ~8.3 sun-hours a day across the Thar, ~78 GWh in a typical year. Our entire manufactory pulls a fraction of that.

  • 78 GWh / year Typical generation, against ~12 GWh drawn
  • 62,000 tonnes CO₂ / year Avoided versus a coal-grid baseline
  • 6.5× net-positive More generated than the plant ever consumes
  • 0 diesel hours No back-up generators on a normal week
DAILY GENERATION · TYPICAL APRIL DAY kW × 1000
04 h 06 09 12 15 18 20 h
Peak ~46 MW · Sustained ~5 h above 30 MW · Off-grid before sunset
THE FOREST · A PROVENANCE NOTE
FOLIO 03 / 08 FSC CoC · PLANTATION ONLY
III Folio III · The Forest

Every plank can name
the field it grew in.

We do not cut from native forest. We have not, since the second generation wrote it into the order book. Every billet, board and burl that enters the manufactory comes from a managed plantation, an FSC chain-of-custody line, or a salvage source we can name on a piece of paper.

  • A
    Plantation timber, all four species. Sheesham, acacia, mango and farmed teak — drawn from co-operative growers within 600 km, on rotation cycles between 10 and 25 years.
  • B
    FSC-CoC line on request. A separate chain-of-custody line runs FSC-Mix and FSC-100% timber for clients whose programmes require it. Documentation per shipment.
  • C
    Reclaimed & salvage timber. Old beams, decommissioned railway sleepers, retired river-pier timbers — sorted, kiln-redried, and returned to use as character pieces.
  • D
    Zero rainforest, ever. No tropical hardwoods of uncertain origin. No CITES-listed species. No "exotic" without a paper trail. We will lose an order before we lose this rule.
12,000+
Saplings planted with grower co-ops, last 36 months
0
Cubic metres from native or rainforest sources
600 km
Maximum sourcing radius — keeps the carbon close
THE AIR · BREATH ON THE FLOOR
FOLIO 04 / 08 WATER-BASE FINISHES
IV Folio IV · The Air

A floor where you can smell
the wood, not the chemistry.

The cheapest way to finish furniture is also the worst way to breathe. We don't run that line. Every spray booth at Saraf is plumbed for water-based, low-VOC finish and ducted through fabric-bag filtration. The carpenter spends the day in a workshop, not a chemistry lab.

  • Water-based finishes, default. Low-VOC, EU-grade water-borne lacquers and oils. Solvent-based finish runs only on request and only where regulation requires it.
  • Fabric-bag dust capture. Five-micron bag filtration on every machine in the rough mill. Sawdust drops to silos, not lungs.
  • Negative-pressure spray rooms. Booths are kept under negative pressure with three-stage filtration. No overspray drifts onto the next bench.
  • Annual particulate audit. Independently measured, kept on file, available on request to specifiers and brand partners.
THE LOOP · NOTHING TO THE LANDFILL
FOLIO 05 / 08 ZERO · WASTE · POLICY
V Folio V · The Loop

Every sliver of the log
finds a second seat.

A log is, on average, half furniture and half what gets thrown away. The manufactory's own internal accounting refuses that arithmetic. Every shaving, offcut and chip has a destination written against it on the daily floor sheet.

THE HANDS · A ROLL OF PEOPLE
FOLIO 06 / 08 SEDEX SMETA · 4-PILLAR
VI Folio VI · The Hands

Furniture is a person
the buyer never meets.

Eight hundred-plus people make every order possible. Beyond the SEDEX SMETA four-pillar audit — labour, health & safety, environment, ethics — sit a set of plain, unaudited commitments the family has kept since the first generation.

  • A living wage, not a legal one. Floor-rate set 18% above the Rajasthan statutory minimum, reviewed each financial year against a basket of regional living-wage benchmarks.
  • An on-site clinic, free. A staffed primary-care clinic on the manufactory grounds — no charge to artisans or their dependents. ~3,200 covered.
  • A drinking-water plant, on the floor. A reverse-osmosis purification plant on site supplies cool, clean drinking water at every shift station — free, all year, for artisans and visitors alike.
  • Children's schooling, paid. Tuition, uniforms and books for the children of full-time artisans up to Class XII. ~140 children in the programme this year.
  • An apprentice line. Twenty-four young joiners and finishers a year, two-year paid apprenticeship under named master craftsmen.
  • Women on the floor & in the office. ~28 women supervisors and section heads, with active programmes in the finish line and the design studio.
  • Audited, on schedule. SEDEX SMETA 4-Pillar audit on rotation; corrective action plans closed and signed-off, on file, available to clients.
800+
Direct artisan employees
140
Children in the school programme
0
Lost-time accidents · trailing twelve months
THE YEAR'S LEDGER · CLOSING THE BOOKS
FOLIO 07 / 08 FY 2024–25 · UNAUDITED DRAFT
VII Folio VII · The Year's Ledger

A balance sheet,
written in weather.

What follows is our annual reckoning, posted in the same ledger style our grandfather kept his books — debits on the left, credits on the right, a closing balance at the bottom. The currency happens to be CO₂ and water.

FY 2024–25 · ENVIRONMENTAL LEDGER SARDARSHAHAR · UNIT I & II
DEBITS (footprint we created)
  • Manufacturing energy drawn~12 GWh
  • Diesel for transport (own fleet)~610 kL
  • Embodied CO₂ in inputs (est.)~3,400 t
  • Sea freight emissions (Scope 3)~5,800 t
SUBTOTAL · CO₂e ≈ 11,300 t
CREDITS (returned to the books)
  • Solar energy exported to grid~66 GWh
  • CO₂ avoided · solar generation~62,000 t
  • Carbon stored in shipped product~9,400 t
  • Saplings raised with co-ops~12,000
SUBTOTAL · CO₂e ≈ 71,400 t
CLOSING BALANCE net to the atmosphere
−60,100 t CO₂e net-positive · the year balanced six times over
SIGNED · Madhu Sudan Saraf POSTED · 31 MARCH 2025 METHOD · GHG PROTOCOL · DRAFT

The figures above are management estimates posted in good faith and not yet independently assured. A third-party assurance statement against the GHG Protocol and the SEDEX SMETA framework is in preparation and will be published with the FY 2024–25 sustainability report.

Folio VIII · A Promise

We measure the year
so the year answers back.

Sustainability, in this house, is not a department — it is a habit kept across three generations. Specifiers, brand partners and procurement teams are welcome to walk the floor, read the ledger, and audit the books.

Request the Sustainability Report Walk the Floor
Address
Plot No. 4,5,6,7,8,9 RIICO Industrial Area,
Sardarshahar – 331 403,
Rajasthan, India
Email
exports@saraf.global
Phone
+91 291 260 0000