Construction has begun on a coffee processing plant at one mile in Portsmouth.
The plant will have the capacity to process two thousand tonnes of coffee beans per year.Prime Minister Hon Roosevelt Skerrit told parliament on Wednesday that as part of the coffee development programme, 25 acres of coffee have been established and over 10,000 coffee seedlings have been prepared for distribution.Principal advisor to the Prime Minister Edward Lambert during a post budget discussion on Wednesday evening explained what this means for Dominica.
“That calls for approximately 2000 acres of coffee to be established. There is some coffee that is already established. It is in the region of between 50 and 100 acres, the ministry of agriculture is still working on this. We know that we have lands that are capable of growing the finest Arabica coffee which is the type of coffee that has given Jamaica its great name. Blue mountain coffee is really Arabica coffee grown at a certain altitude, and we have the ideal altitude in Dominica for growing that coffee.
“He also said, “I recall when I had returned to Dominica in the mid 70’s there was a massive coffee rehabilitation program which was being managed by Derek Zamore at the time. In my conversation with him not too long ago he was of the view that indeed we do have the lands to grow up to 2000 acres of coffee and there has already been a substantial amount of coffee established but because of neglect and the heavy focus we had on bananas the cultivation of coffee went into a decline. We have a massive task of rehabilitating the existing coffee cultivations as well as bringing more acres into cultivation.”
Meantime a locally registered company nature island coffee has formed a joint venture company with the Venezuelan coffee corporation.Dominica’s equity contribution in venedom is the coffee equipment and land on which the plant is being constructed.
“The venedom has obtained funding of 11.2 million dollars from the Alba Bank to construct and commission the coffee plant to assist farmers in rehabilitating their farms and to finance the establishment of new farms. Madam speaker as the production stimulus farmers participating in this program will be assisted by government under the mentorship program. Farmers will also be assisted in harvesting the beans and pay the guaranteed price by venedom. Madam speaker the next stage in the value chain is the processing and packaging of the final product, for the operation of this link in the chain the following positions will be available; one mechanical-electrical engineer, and we will target graduates returning with a first degree in the field, one quality assurance supervisor, we will target graduates in food science and technology for this position, five machine operators , we will target the graduating class of engineering at the state college for filling these positions, ten packers and one marketing officer to work alongside export Dominica. We expect at least 18 new jobs from the operation aspect of this enterprise and many more in the actual production and cultivation of the coffee beans. The processed and packaged beans will be sold to Venezuela and subsequently other members of the Alba group, the French market and Caricom.”, said Honourable Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit.