Kampong Thom province plans to establish a dedicated cashew nuts hub to supply specially to countries like Turkey, the Middle East and the European Union market, said Suy Kokthean, Vice President of the Cashew Nut Association of Cambodia (CAC).
Speaking to Khmer Times yesterday, Kokthean said that he had discussed with businessmen from Turkey and the United States to find sources of funding for the establishment of a cashew nut centre in Kampong Thom province.
He said that this cooperation between the CAC, cashew nut processing companies and international investors is to promote the cashew nut sector in line with government policies.
“We want to establish a cashew nut hub as soon as possible. Our team has started collecting necessary information from enterprises across the country to find out which enterprises are keen to participate in the establishment of the centre in Kampong Thom,” said Kokthean.
“We plan to set up the centre during the harvest season next year so that we can take orders and begin processing for export. Currently, the team is assessing our processing capacity and we will continue to discuss this.”
Kokthean was optimistic about Cambodia’s ability to supply cashew products to major markets, as the Kingdom is currently the second-largest producer of raw cashew nuts in the world. In the next three to five years, Cambodia will be able to be the number one in the world.
“We want to export Cambodian cashews to Turkey before entering the European and the Middle East market. These two markets are big, that’s why we need to set up a large team to get orders from them.”
It should be noted that the world’s first-largest producer of raw cashew nuts is the Ivory Coast, while Cambodia overtook India as the second-largest.
Recently, Mirarth GreenTech, a Japanese firm, evinced interest in building two large factories in Kampong Thom province.
Source: khmertimeskh
