Farmers pushed to lift quality

IT is important for farmers and local buyers to maintain the quality of their vanilla produce, says the executive of a French company.
Muriel Acat-Vergnet, president and director of French vanilla company Prova, told The National that Papua New Guinea was the only country producing the Tahitensis variety. “We are buying our beans mainly from Madagascar,” she said.
“Madagascar produces 80 per cent of the world’s production so they have quasi-monopoly.
“We want to source vanilla from elsewhere, not only from there.”
Acat-Vergnet is visiting vanilla-producing countries around the world. She visited Maprik in East Sepik – the hub of vanilla production in Papua New Guinea – for a day.
“We are using and transforming vanilla that we are buying everywhere in the world into extracts, including PNG as well,” Acat-Vergnet said.
She found out during her visit to Maprik that farmers worked hard and their plantations were well maintained,
“We are very interested in the vanilla coming from PNG because it has a very distinctive aroma,” Acat-Vergnet said.
“It’s another species different from the one that we see and
buy in Madagascar and I believe there is a market for this quality.
“We need quality vanilla.”
Acat-Vergnet was invited by one of the main players in the vanilla industry in PNG, Intek, to visit the district and see for herself the quality of beans that were being produced by the locals growers.