Chinese firm invests in cassava processing plant in Cambodia

By APD writer Kin Ratha

Phnom Penh, April 2, 2018 (APD) —Green Leader Holdings Group, a Hong Kong-listed firm, officially broke ground at the first cassava processing factory in Snoul district of Kratie province on April 1 for its business expansion into the South East Asia.

The first plant located in Kratie Special Economic Zone of Kratie province and will be operational sometime at the end of the year.

Michael Tse, Green Leader CEO, said at the Ground Breaking Ceremony that the factory is the start of the company’s committed investment in Cambodia’s cassava industry to transform Cambodia’s cassava industry to be more competitive and better.

“Today is the mostt important day for Green Leader over the ground- breaking ceremony of our very first cassava starch factory. Our company attaches great importance to the formal establishment of our first factory in Cambodia as a concrete show of our firm commitment to the Royal Government of Cambodia and to the people of Cambodia, especially the valuable farmer communities throughout the country, that we are serious about helping to industrialize the long struggling cassava sector of the country,” he said.

“We hope through our expansion model in achieving sustainability through an economy of scale, we would be deepening our strong partnership with the farmer communities throughout the country including the key institutional partners such as the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries & Forestry, the Ministry of Commerce, the United Nations Development Program of Cambodia and any future key ones to come,” Mr.Michael added.

Veng Sakhon said that Green Leader (Cambodia) Co., Ltd is a subsidiary of Green Leader Holding Group Limited, a listed firm in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange invested approximately $ 20 million to create a starch processing plant and a modern bio-ethanol fuel, to be one of the world's largest processing plants which can process some 130,000 tons per year and 2 million tons within 5 years.

“Now, Cambodia is the 8th largest producer of cassava in the world and fourth in Southeast Asia. Given this tremendous potential, the company decided to put their investment in Cambodia in order to build some 20 factories processing to export,” he said.

According to data from Ministry of Agriculture, Cassava plantation area in Cambodia has been increasing from 30,000 hectares in 2005 to 684,070 hectares in 2016—of which the yield area was 675,126 hectares in 2016 with the total production of 14.8 million tons.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)