Enga growers’ sweet supply

The Sirunki Farm in Enga supplies fresh strawberries on a daily basis to RH Hypermarket to replace imports from other countries.
Assistant manager Phil Ager said they purchased strawberries from Sirunki Farm – and the quality is considered “very good”.
“Due to the highly-perishable nature of strawberries, they can only be air freighted to Port Moresby, which severely adds to the selling price which is around K58 to K62 per kg in Port Moresby,” he said.
Ager said the final selling price in Port Moresby was due to the cost of its required fragility in picking, packing and air freighting.
“We sadly run out of strawberries on occasions due to our supplier being unable to supply the volumes required,” he said.
“However, we are in constant contact with our supplier to ‘close the gap’ on this issue.
“We have been buying strawberries from Sirunki now for several years.
“It comes in on a daily basis for freshness.
“The Sirunki Farm also supplies to RH Hypermarkets pre-packed potatoes which are of a very high standard.
“We had a terrific promotion last September where we wanted to reduce the selling price for a few days during Independence week.
“We were pleasantly surprised at the increase in volume that was sold for the three days.”
Ager said the arrangement was in line with their mission statement of supporting local communities.
“Due to the climate, strawberries are only grown in the Highlands areas such as Mt Hagen in very minimal quantities and also in and around Enga,” he said.
Strawberries grown in the Sirunki area of Enga have attracted interest from other markets like Singapore.
According to Sirunki’s farm manager Liran Tziberman, samples of the strawberries grown in Enga have been sent to Singapore and “the reaction was good”.
“In near future we might export to Singapore,” Tziberman said at the Sirunki project site when taking a Government delegation on a tour around the potato and strawberry facility.
The Sirunki agro project was established four years ago following a partnership between the Enga government and Israeli group Innovative Agro Industry (IAI).
Under the agreement, young people from the province were recently trained in Israel on farming techniques.
Tziberman said strawberries and potatoes from the farm were mostly supplied to Port Moresby and sold in supermarkets.
“We send strawberries through Wapenamanda three times a week, maximum of 200kg each time or 600kg per week,” he said.
“We have one hectare of strawberry field and working on duplicating to the other field.
“I have 12 ladies running the strawberry plot.
“For potatoes, local farmers supply me 15 tonnes per week.
“We buy a kilo for K1.80 and send down to Port Moresby.
“In future we plan to plant carrots and onions.”