Donors lauded for refurbishing mill

Farmers of the Oil Mill located at the Green Valley Pilot Center in Bakingili, have expressed gratitude to their donors, for financing a project to upgrade the standard of the Mill and thus improve production capacity.

The farmers, through the president of FASPOPU (Fako Sector Palm Oil Producers Union), echoed the gratitude, during the visit of a delegation comprising of representatives from UNIDO (United Nations Industrial and Development Organisation), FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation), CFC (Common Fund for Commodities) and the Pilot Steering Committee, to the Mill, on Friday, October 10.

After a tour around the Mill to assess its present standard and the possible ways to improve it, the delegation settled for a working session.

In his address, FASPOPU president, Joseph Elundu said they are growing in strength following the donors’ immense contribution in refurbishing the Mill with production capacity of 5 tons of Palm Oil per hour which will render the Mill very competitive, especially with the fact that, government has donated a tractor and a weighing bridge to the Mill.

While acknowledging that the center has created employment for youths, Joseph Elundu pleaded that some of their difficulties should be looked into, like the irregular flow of electricity, absence of storage tanks, the need for a press machine to produce palm kernel and also for the government to assist them in meeting up with the challenges of second generation agriculture, which demands for mechanisation and also the improvement of farm to market roads.

The donors on their part, expressed satisfaction with the present level of the project, and said a training programme will take place in the days ahead to train personnel on how to carryout maintenance at the Mill. They also urged the stakeholders to effectively participate in the management of the Mill so that it generates income to the oil palm sector and the Cameroon economy at large.

According to the Project director, Bassel El Khatib, the project which has been witnessing several trainings had as main difficulty the fact that “It was designed in 2005, but implementation started only in 2011, and what was estimated as the price of equipment had increased about three times what was planned, and we had to put a lot of money into equipment purchase, this was the big challenge, but we have managed until now to solve the problem and continue the project successfully”.

After the successful visit to the site, the delegation continued to visit two sites in Manyu and Momo divisions.

The Green Valley Oil Palm Mill which was built in 1995 by late Dr Ndi Tatani and an Italian partner by name Donato Nitti to process green valley palm fruit (FFB) currently has 150 farmers with about 150 hectares of production land, after the Mt. Cameroon eruption of 1999 devoured 72 hectares of its production landscape.