GHANA – Ghanaian agricultural trader, Kingdom Exim Ghana is seeking to invest US$15 million to establish a cashew processing plant in the country.
The investment will be spread across 3 years with the company injecting US$5million per year in equipment and infrastructure development.
According to Ghana News Agency, this is in addition the US$25 million investment made by the company over the past 13 years across different agriculture value chains.
Kingdom Exim was established in 2008, as a leading West African agro-products exporter and supplier dealing with cashew nuts, shea nuts, soya beans, peanuts and maize, among other products.
It works with over 1,000 out-growers and has about 500 acres put under cashew cultivation at Sikka, in Bono East Region.
Under its end-to-end services and out-grower model, Kingdom Exim supports farmers with inputs i.e. fertilizer and farming tools and provides ready market for their produce.
Other than in Ghana, the company has operations in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Senegal, Tanzania, Namibia, Togo, and Benin.
Ghana the second largest global exporter of cashew nuts in 2019
According to a recent report by IndexBox, the global cashew nut market expanded significantly to US$14.9 billion in 2019, growing by 5.6% against the previous year.
In 2019, the crops production amounted to 5.4M tonnes, picking up by 4.4% compared with the previous year.
The countries with the highest volumes of cashew nut production in the period under review were Viet Nam (1.5M tonnes), India (803K tonnes) and Cote d’Ivoire (747K tonnes), together comprising 56% of global production.
Tanzania, the Philippines, Ghana, Benin, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Brazil and Indonesia lagged somewhat behind, together comprising a further 33%.
In terms of export, Cote d’Ivoire represented the major exporter of raw cashew nuts in the world, with the volume of exports recording 609K tonnes, which was near 39% of total exports in 2019.
Ghana with 236K tonnes held a 15% share of total exports, which put it in second place, followed by Tanzania (13%), Guinea (9.7%), Benin (6%) and Nigeria (4.8%). Indonesia (49K tonnes) followed a long way behind the leaders.
The countries with the highest volumes of cashew nut consumption in 2019 were Viet Nam (2.2M tonnes), India (1.5M tonnes) and the Philippines (243K tonnes), together accounting for 74% of global consumption.
Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Brazil, Cote d’Ivoire, Mozambique and Indonesia lagged somewhat behind, together comprising a further 18%.
Viet Nam and India constitute the two global centres of the nut’s processing. They do not only grow the nuts at their own but also source raw cashew nuts from producing countries in Africa and other countries.
Thus, both countries constituted the largest raw cashew nut importers, together comprising 96% of total import with Viet Nam’s imports valuing US$772M and India US$1.1 billion.
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