A new coffee mill is expected to be built in Central Province within the next four years.
In realizing this project, the Central Province Government and the Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) have signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA).
Under the new MoA, a new coffee mill will be built in the province which will allow for the processing of parchment coffee to green been (hulling) before the green beans are exported to places like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where coffee from Central both Robusta and Arabica have an existing market.
Acting Provincial Administrator Edward Kila took the time to welcome the team from CIC and spoke on the long overdue signing of the MoA.
“Wants to commence the implementation of the MoA given the amount of work that needs to be done to develop the coffee industry in Central Province and its potential impact on the household incomes of coffee farmers and the local economy,” Kila said.
The importance of CIC to working with the Central Province was expressed by CIC chief executive officer Steven Tumae.
“The reason why CIC is interested in working with the Central Provincial Government is because the PNG Government under (MTDP 3 & 4) development plans has given CIC targets to achieve in the Highlands. People are saturated as there is no big land to plant coffee but in nontraditional coffee growing areas like Enga, Southern Highlands Province, Hela, Central, AROB, Gulf, Northern and Milne Bay.
“These are the areas CIC will fulfill the production and export targets, so because of the Central Provincial Government's interest in coffee we are pushing Central Government to be prioritized before the other Provinces,” stated Tumae.
He also revealed that as part of CIC’s drive to push coffee for the Central Province an extension officer will be added to the already one extension officer on the ground for the Central Province and another extension officer will be added for Gulf.
CIC’s Corporate Service Manager Smith Baba spoke of the CIC’s strategic plans and what they hope to achieve.
“In our CIC strategic business plan by the year 2030, we should export 3 million green bean bags and fetch 1 billion kina in foreign currencies to achieve this CIC cannot do this standalone, we need strategic partners, we need strategic partnerships and we are happy that with this MoA Central is coming on board.
Baba said according to CIC, records show that Central has 4 million coffee trees, with the potential production of 32, 000 green bean bags annually, which has the potential to export 100 containers shipped annually.
He stated that the potential economic value for coffee in the Central province is K19,200,000 annually injected into the local economy.
“The province now with our extension work going on the ground we can reach up to K30 million if we aggressively work on the structure of the MoA going forward.”