The Jamaica-based Caribbean Broilers Group (CB) says it is investing US$120 million in a series of agricultural projects it hopes will bolster food security within the region.
The group, which operates three separate divisions including a vertically integrated farming, processing and distribution business that focuses on locally produced meats, said that the investment will increase its capacity by over 25-per cent and will allow it to double production, to meet the regional export market.
“Several Caribbean countries still import poultry meats from outside the region. And the CB Group hopes to significantly reduce these imports from the UK, Europe, North and South America, and help to fill the gap for other local processors, and ultimately improve upon food security within the region,” CB said in a statement.
“The Nest”
It said the seven-year project, dubbed ‘The Nest’, is the group’s first Hybrid Growth Centre (HGC) in Jamaica, housing multiple operations that are environmentally inter-dependent.
It said it plans for the HGC to operate like an ecosystem of sorts, where outputs from one operation will be used as inputs in another, to generate less waste, use less energy, emit less greenhouse gas emissions and to overall be a better global citizen.
The Nest, described as an incubator of innovation, is already home to the Group’s livestock research center, Hill Run Farms, where they have been testing new equipment, feed rations and growing techniques over the past four years.
The group said that the long term goal is to structure how crops are grown, similarly to how it raises chickens and pigs, by partnering with independent farmers.
“CB’s new processing plant will also be the first in the region to utilize Air Chill technology, a superior process that is mandatory in Europe and used by the most advanced processing plants in North America. “This will result in the company saving some 200 million liters of water annually,” the company said, adding “it intends to take biological by-products from the processing operation and convert it into valuable proteins, that will be exported and earn much needed foreign exchange for the country.
