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Business |
RSL seeks top role in agriculture
Diversified company plans to make
Markham Valley PNG’s food bowl
By JASON SOM KAUT
RAMU Sugar Ltd seeks
to become the country’s premiere agro-industrial company and a
catalyst in transforming the Mark-ham Valley into a national
food bowl.
CEO Michael Knight said his company was diversifying its
activities to include oil palm, cashew nuts, and soon peanuts.
Mr Knight disclosed this in Ramu last Thursday when he welcomed
delegates from the association of development financing
institutions in the Pacific. They were in the country to visit
project sites funded by the National Development Bank (NDB).
Mr Knight highlighted the different projects that RSL had
recently embarked on such as oil palm and cashew nut.
He said crude palm oil would be refined in Europe while the
slightly-bigger-in-size cashew nuts would be processed in
Vietnam.
Oil palm plantation manager Daniel Wohwiehembe said that a total
of 2,000ha of hybrid oil palm had already been planted with a
further 1,500ha expected to be covered starting December when
rainfall is minimal.
The hybrid oil palm takes a minimum two years to mature.
The palm oil mill will be commissioned by the end of next month,
thus creating jobs and contributing to the country’s export
revenue.
On its Ramu beef operations, Mr Knight revealed that with 45% of
beef being produced locally, RSL intends to further increase
production by expanding abattoir capacity within the next three
years.
“We are diversifying from sugar and beef into cashew nut and
palm oil,” he said.
He also mentioned they would be looking to introduce new
products such as bio-fuel, peanuts and noni, with plans to
venture into forestry under a project with ACIAR.
He stressed that RSL intended to involve smallholder farmers in
producing complementary products as another means of providing
livelihood to 30,000 to 35,000 villagers.
He also revealed that RSL would also launch a new corporate name
late this year.
 
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