THE GLOBAL flavour industry has an estimated value in excess of US$1 billion per year. Jamaica is blessed with some of the finest natural flavours in the world, from Blue Mountain coffee to ginger and scotch bonnet pepper, and at higher than average concentrations in the plants which produce these flavours.
When these two facts are put together it makes perfect sense that we should seek to capitalise on our flavour resources in the growing international trade. The Ministry of Commerce, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Agriculture have jointly developed plans to stimulate the extraction of flavour products from Jamaican raw materials for the export market. The inter-ministerial collaboration is itself worthy of commendation, for too often the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. One of the crucial and chronic problems faced by the agro-processing industry has been the availability of a regular supply of quality agricultural raw materials for processing. Ensuring supply of raw materials for flavour extraction in collaboration with the farming sector is therefore sensible business planning.
It is more the rule than the exception to announce wishes and intentions with great fanfare and to applause, but Phillip Paulwell has assured his audience at the opening of the Western Regional Office of the Ministry of Commerce, Science and Technology in Montego Bay that the flavour-extracting technology called the spinning cone column has already been purchased at a cost of US$300,000 (J$15 million). This is a rather modest investment, compared to many other state projects, but a very significant one by the Government to jump-start a new area of production with great potential for future export earnings. The purchased technology is scheduled to be installed in Jamaica by mid-year with processing to get under way in Bull Savannah, St. Elizabeth within four months.
Our traditional agricultural products are facing substantial problems on the world market and declining production at home. Diversification into non-traditionals, especially with value-added, has to be the wave of the future. The Ministries of Commerce, Science and Technology, and Agriculture are seeking to inject new technologies into the agro-industrial sector and to generate new products for niche markets in which we may have some special advantage as in the flavour market, as Mr. Paulwell observed last week.
The S&T sector has done a great deal of research and development work on agro-industrial problems and all forces must now be harnessed to move from dream to market.
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