Trukai plans to grow rice in PNG

By JUNIOR UKAHA
RICE processing company Trukai Industries Limited plans to eventually grow rice in the country instead of just packaging it.
Chief executive officer Greg Worthington-Eyre said this during a meeting with government officials from Fiji and Papua New Guinea at the company’s head office in Lae.
Worthington-Eyre said the plan would take time and resources to achieve but it was something the company wanted.
He said Trukai had already established a number of rice trial farms in the country and was experimenting on different rice varieties to see which ones were most suitable to grow locally on a commercial scale.
Trukai has trial farms in Morobe (Erap), West New Britain (Kimbe), Oro and Central (Kairuku). “It’s a very long and very expensive process,” he said.
“We started a number of years ago but we had some political issues along the way that we needed to address. But we’ll get there. We are looking to expand rice access to more areas around PNG, especially some of the more remote areas.”
He said there was a village sustainable programme “where we go out and train them how to grow rice”.
Worthington-Eyre said Trukai was also in the process of developing a solar-powered rice milling machine to assist villagers in milling their rice before consumption or selling.
He said Trukai was committed to developing rice and contributing towards food sustainability and food security.
Two-thirds of the company is owned by Sun Rice of Australia and one-third by Melanesian Trustees Services.