A tomato processing factory, under the One District One Factory initiative, has been set up at Domfete near Jinijini in the Berekum West District of the Bono Region to provide a ready market for farmers who grow the vegetable.
The project hopes to employ 350 factory workers, and 2,500 out-growers and in-growers.
The factory, when completed, would have two production lines with the capacity to process 40,000 metric tonnes of fresh tomatoes every year.
To ensure the availability of tomatoes for the factory all year round, a demonstration farm has been set up to get the best variety of the raw material for the farmers to feed the factory.
Aside from that, out-growers have been contacted to grow more tomatoes to feed the factory. Again, boreholes have been drilled and connected to the farms to ensure the availability of water all year round.
The company has also acquired about fifty acres of land for tomato production to ensure the availability of the raw material.
Management of the factory has set up a community radio in the area to educate farmers about modern methods of farming among others, while an incubator for the tomato seedlings, research centre, and model farm with the capacity to transplant three million seedlings every three weeks to out-grower farmers will also be established later this year.
The government’s long-term vision of industrialising Ghana’s economy by adding value to raw materials through a private sector-led process keeps receiving support as more individuals are now venturing into the establishment of agro-processing factories across the country.
In effect, hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs would be created along the production and marketing chain, while rural-urban migration could become a thing of the past, as people, especially the youth, would find work to do in their communities.
The Fetentaa, Domfete, Jinijini, and Koraso communities in the Berekum West District have carved a niche for themselves in the production of tomatoes in the country, and the factory has come to boost productivity.
The post Berekum West District gets vegetable processing factory under ID1F appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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