Spanish firm to build plantain processing unit in Cameroon

The Société d’actions prioritaires intégrées de développement agricole au Cameroun (Sapidacam – Integrated Agricultural Development Priority Actions Company in Cameroon) and the Spanish agro-industrial firm Tomsa Destil signed on June 10, 2016, in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital, a partnership agreement for the construction of a plantain processing unit in the country.

The project, which has a plantain product component, plans to set up farms from which will be harvested 500,000 tons of plantains on a yearly basis. The plant for its part will be producing 200,000 tons of chips, 300,000 tons of plantain flour, 1.2 billion litres of ethanol.

Through the biomass, the project is also planning for the production of 200 megawatts of electricity and 120,000 m3 of biogas, we officially learn.

Sapidacam is already sponsoring a plantain production agropole in the town of Mpagne, in the Eastern region of Cameroon. As part of this project launched in 2015, with an investment of FCFA 1.8 billion, this Cameroonian company was planning to create farms covering 2,700 hectares in total and develop 20 km of roads.

As a reminder, in addition to a production insufficient to meet the demand of the consumers, the plantain is only valued to up to 30% in Cameroon according to experts, most of its by-products being unknown to the public and Cameroonian producers.

In order to reverse this trend and take advantage of the benefits in the plantain sector, the Cameroonian government launched in 2005, the plantain sector reconversion programme (Prebap). Eleven years later, Prebap has not really been implemented yet.