The Farmers' Clubs Processing centre is a bio-certified nuts-for-sale factory.
After the Project (Financed by the European Union in Guinea Bissau) ended in 2019, a cooperation was established between ADPP-GB, ACACB (the factory) and company Naturkost Ernest Weber to support the processing.
The project has an established cashew factory, storage, cashew drying area and equipment to employ 120 women and 90 men in processing and packing.
The factory has 2 years of experience cutting, sorting, packing and selling nuts. This includes applying comprehensive rules and hygiene practices and preventing bugs and contamination with chemicals banned by European standards.
The ADPP-GB cashew nuts are bio-certified in the production (plantation phase), and in the ACACB processing and packing phases. The plan was to bio certificate 134 local farmers' cashew production plots in 2022 but it is postponed.
Since 2018 the German company Naturkost Ernest Weber has bought processed nuts.
ADPP-GB supported the processing in the first year by creating an agreement with the Farmers who rented a cashew nut plot in the ADPP-GB plantation. Thereafter, all the nuts were sold on credit to the factory.
Expansion of the factory was done in 2020 with new cashew nut storage capacity, more toilets and workers' changing room, canteen, and offices and drying of the cashew. The expansion increased the capacity of the factory to process 630 tons more of raw cashew nuts in 2022.
The support to buy raw cashew nuts secured the production the whole year. The factory exported 3 out of 10 containers because of lack of people to process the nuts, as all nuts are hand cut to secure whole nuts.
In addition, the German company Naturkost Ernest Weber informed that they buy just 4 top categories of nuts, meaning that the remaining 50% of the production need to be sold at the local market.
To improve of the production a humidifier was bought, and an oven was constructed to take 2000 kg in one batch.
The factory is working on getting more local customers and secure the production in 2023.
