EC funds to revive

Tanna coffee

EUROPEAN Community funds will

be used to build a coffee processing factory on the island of Tanna which will initially meet the needs of the country’s tourism industry, but which will eventually export roasted coffee.

In 1939 the then Anglo-french condo minium of New Hebrides produced 932 tonnes of coffee, but production has rarely exceeded 100 tonnes a year since

then. On Tanna, the main coffee grow ing area of Vanuatu, large areas of trees have been left to grow wild.

The new factory is expected to restore the island’s industry and will be aiming at a capacity of about 30 tonnes a year.

It will cost VT14.3 million (USS 130,950) and the funds will be channeled through the Tourism Council of the South Pacific, which is an EC-financed organisation.

Almost all the coffee consumed in the country is sold through cafes or hotels, which explains the tourism-bias of the venture. The factory will be operated by the Tanna Coffee Development Com

pany (TCDC), which still owns a large plantation on the island. Since the company’s inception in 1984 there has been considerable planting of new areas on Tanna, and much of this will come into production next year. The factory is

expected to be completed in September.

But the venture will also rely on Arabica beans from smallholders. In the past, the TCDC has been unable to offer much by way of incentives to local farmers when it received as little as VTI3O per kilo of green beans exported itself. But it expects to earn sufficient from roast coffee sales to allow a better payment in the future. □