-also want to improve marketing strategy
THE Pomeroon Women’s Agro-processors Association, the group that won a regional contest for innovative rural projects with its Virgin Coconut Oil product earlier this year, is convinced that the local small-scale food processing industry is on a roll, and its members are gearing themselves to capitalise on this favourable situation.
This is according to Chairperson, Rosamund Benn.
Agro-processing refers to those activities that transform an agricultural commodity into a different form that adds value to the product.
PWAPA was established in 2001 at Charity, Region Two (Pomeroon/Supenaam) to create employment for women by promoting and improving their livelihoods through the production of processed products.
Apart from the Virgin coconut oil, the association is involved in producing and packaging pepper sauces, fruit mixes, wines, achars, seasoning salts and green seasonings.
PWAPA recently won in Barbados the first prize in a contest aimed at identifying projects that promote rural enterprise and innovation at the grassroots level.
That contest was held on June 15, 2011 and the projects submitted in the contest had to have the potential for replication and expansion at the regional level.
The judges had also graded the projects on a series of criteria, including sustainability, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
With its Virgin coconut oil product PWAPA, represented by Benn and former Chairperson Vilma DaSilva, won the prize hands down from four other groups originating from Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.
In an update in an interview with the Chronicle last week, Benn disclosed that the US$5000 prize money would be used to buy equipment for processing.
“The prize money will be used to upgrade our coconut oil processing system. Such stuff as the purchase of a mill, blenders, pots and generally materials that will make production less manual, and thereby boost production,” she said.
She disclosed that demand for processed food products on the local market was steady and strong, and encouraged by this, the association was pursuing a two-pronged strategy of upgrading equipment while expanding promotion and marketing activities countrywide.
She said that PWAPA had recently had one solar dryer installed at its operating base, and this was now being used for processing fruits, and the association is now seeking to acquire another solar dryer to increase its production.
The establishment of a greenhouse in which PWAPA grows vegetables for processing is another recent significant milestone in the life of that association.
Benn said that the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (NGMC) had also recently assisted PWAPA members when they visited Georgetown to establish marketing linkages with a number of supermarkets.
She expressed PWAPA’s appreciation for the technical assistance and support its members had received from such agencies as the NGMC, the Agriculture Department of the Region Two Administration, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), among other agencies.
PWAPA’s involvement in the contest in Barbados had been sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, and the group had also benefited from a computer donated by that ministry.
She said:”There are so many others who have contributed to our growth and expansion that I could go on and on. No offence intended to those inadvertently left out.”
She was of the view that the local small-scale food processing industry has great potential for growth.
She mentioned ways of organising to cash in on this developing situation. Among those are the establishment of a national Women Agro-Processors
Development Network (WAPDN) which aims at bringing all agro-processing groups, mainly women’s groups, together under one umbrella.
The national body formed last August aims at making possible productivity gains such as economies of scale in purchase of raw materials, sharing information on processes, and jointly marketing products, among other synergies.