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Agriculture Minister Roland Royer has announced that the government has invested about $4 million for the rehabilitation of the Coffee Plant in Portsmouth.<\/p>\n
He made the announcement as a guest on Focus on Government and Development recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are still on track, Cabinet has approved a two-phase strategy for the coffee sector,\u201d he said. \u201cThe first working with the Venezuelans, we [invested] about $4 million to rehabilitate the Coffee Plant in Portsmouth.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, \u201cWe know it was damaged by Hurricane Maria, and even prior to that we had some operational issues, and so, as we speak we have all the equipment required, already packaged and ready to be shipped, and will be on island before May of 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n
Royer added, \u201cSo far we have brought water, DOWASCO lines to the facility that were not there before, and of course, we work with DOMLEC as well to install and replace the transformer which will be commissioned when we are ready to operate the facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furthermore, he said the government has also conducted technical assessment for the uptake of $2 million BTU of natural gas which will be required to operate a plant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have actually started to put things in place and works\u00a0are being done,\u201d he revealed.<\/p>\n
Royer stated that once the government receives the equipment, the technical support will come from Venezuela and a consultant will be hired to install the equipment, \u201cand then the consultant will also train young persons to operate the machinery to have the Coffee Plant running.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meantime, Royer said to begin operation at the plant, the government will import green coffee beans from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Venezuela to process and that will be sold back to their countries while Dominica expands production.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo once there is sufficient coffee on island we will start doing our own coffee brand and market Dominica\u2019s coffee,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Agriculture Minister Roland Royer has announced that the government has invested about $4 million for the rehabilitation of the Coffee Plant in Portsmouth. He made the announcement as a guest on Focus on Government and Development recently. \u201cWe are still…","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":299793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,286,77,235,285,9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy-development","category-governance","category-homepage","category-homepage-carousel","category-infrastructure","category-news","category-regional"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n