The French-owned company Amazon Caribbean Guyana Ltd (Amcar Guyana Ltd) is mulling an investment in the cultivation of around 3,000 acres of heart of palm to consolidate raw material supplies in order to satisfy the demands of what the company’s owner and Chief Executive Officer says is a growing demand in France.
Jean-Francois Gerin, owner and Chief Executive Officer of Amcar told Stabroek Business last week that the company was already in pursuit of the acquisition of lands in the North West District and parts of Region Two to commence cultivation of the first 100 acres of heart of palm, an edible cabbage which grows wild in Guyana and which is processed here and exported by Amcar.
While Amcar has traditionally recruited labour from riverain and interior areas to harvest the heart of palm and sell it to the company, Gerin explained that the more lucrative attraction of gold mining had created a growing labour shortage and the company was acting to guarantee supplies of the crop.
Managing Director Christophe Sureau told Stabroek Business that the company’s decision to cultivate heart of palm in Guyana for the first time was aimed at ensuring that supplies were located close to population centres where access to labour was less challenging.
Cultivation will take place in phases and according to Sureau it will take “three to four years before the country’s first cultivated crop of heart of palm is harvested. Sureau said Amcar is aiming, ideally, for returns from the cultivation exercise which enables it to rely on its heart of palm plantations for around 50 per cent of the crop.
Gerin says Amcar would be open to an arrangement that allows for a partnership between itself and either the government or the private sector to undertake the exercise.
Founded in 1986, Amcar established its first local processing factory here on the banks of the Barima river in 1987 and a second ten years later at Rosignol. A third facility at Mainstay processes pineapple for export. Last year its total production of 413,000 jars and 500,000 jars of product was exported from Guyana in 52 containers.
Gerin said the market in France for processed heart of palm, an industry that also thrives in neighbouring Brazil, had grown by up to 25 per cent recently and the company was mindful of keeping the local commodity on supermarket shelves and dinner tables in France since it has become the most popular Guyana value-added export in Europe.
Amcar is already exporting pineapple from its Mainstay operations and Gerin told Stabroek Business that the company is keen to explore other value-added pursuits in the processed fruit industry, possibly utilizing mango, papaw and watermelon. He explained, however, that an important constraint was the fact that the health-conscious European market required that imported processed fruit be organically cultivated. He explained that the organic cultivation of fruit in Guyana would require that farmers secure technical and financial support, matters on which the company was currently in dialogue with the Ministries of Agriculture and Amerindian Affairs. Gerin said Amcar was also keen to work with non-governmental organizations in this exercise. Gerin said he believed that Guyana could become the first country in the Caribbean to undertake the commercial pursuit of organically grown fruit and vegetables for export.