An indigenous agro firm to extract oil palm for export

Building Business on Values Integrity and Dignity with an acronym B-BOVID, an agro-based firm in the Western Region will soon start extracting palm oil and palm kernel oil for local consumption and export.

This followed a successful installation of two mills to extract palm oil and palm kernel oil by the company.

The Chief Executive Officer of B-BOVID, Mr. Isa Ouedraogo told the media at the project site at Prestea in the Ahanta West District on Friday that the palm oil mill had the capacity to start processing 5 - 40 tones of fresh palm fruits per day.

He said the company would purchase the palm fruits from the farmers and share the profits that would be accrued from the sale of the products at both local and international market.

He added that the palm kernels would also be processed to extract the oil from them, which would initially milled 16 tonnes per day.

Mr Ouedraogo, who was adjudged the best farmer in the region last year, indicated that five foreign companies had already expressed interest in buying the oil and assured the farmers that there was a ready market for their produce and entreated them to go into commercial production of palm fruits.

The CEO said Ghana had the potential of producing enough food to feed the entire West African sub-region and therefore entreated the youth to take agriculture business seriously.

He noted that the company believed in integrated farming system whereby it buys raw materials from farmers, process them in order to add value and then share the profit with them.

He said the potential for agriculture, as a real means for livelihood security remains largely untapped because the people did not have the expertise and resources to effect the needed change.

B-BOVID is promoting a new model of social inclusive commercial farming, which combines innovative agricultural practices, ecological farming, food processing, ICT agriculture and Biodiversity.

It had fish pond containing between 15,000 and 18,000 tilapia, animal husbandry including pigs, cattle, rabbits, goats and sheep to provide sustainable jobs and alternative sources of livelihoods for the youth to promote food security.