Large scale domestic rice production is on its way to becoming a reality for Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Today the Trukai Industries launched their new state of the art rice hulling mill in Lae.
This was described by Trukai’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Greg Worthington- Eyre as “the last link for an unprecedented era of domestic rice production”.
The new mill allows the large scale rice production process to be done locally.
“This now gives us the capability to process rice in a commercial quantity starting with our major project out at Chingwam where we will be planting over 325 hectares”.
Present to officially launch the hulling mill was the Vice Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Hendry Ame accompanied by Minister for Commerce and Industry Wari Mori.
Mr. Ame was given the honor of launching the mill and starting up the machine to commence processing.
Mr. Ame commended Trukai for their efforts in investing in the local rice industry.
“The Agriculture ministry will ensure that the government will support this project and your commitment to enter into large scale rice production”.
He said the step taken by the company in building a hulling mill will greatly help local growers and will also minimise imports.
The new hulling mill has a capacity of processing 12, 000 tons of rice per year. Today 130 tons of rice harvested from the Chingwam Rice Growers cooperative was used for the mills first processing.
Mr. Worthington –Eyre said this expansion will also be providing employment opportunities in the company and for local rice farmers as well.
“It closes the circle of Trukai’s unique value chain and involves seed and site research, planting, growing harvesting, milling packing and distributing domestically grown rice”.
