Thursday, June 5, 2014

Sta. Cruz coffee group gets boost from DTI’s SSF project

STA. CRUZ, Davao del Sur, June 06 – An association of coffee farmers here gets a boost from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) through the Shared Service Facility (SSF) project.

The Jose Rizal Farmers Association (Jorifa), a group of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs), occupies an estimated area of 417 hectares which are planted with 53,415 Robusta coffee trees.

Based on the report of DTI-Davao del Sur, each Robusta coffee tree could produce an average of 0.93 kilogram of coffee berries annually which translates to an aggregate harvest of 50,000 kilograms per year.
With the lack of required facilities to process these berries into dried green coffee beans, the group only enjoys an income of P8 to P10 per kilogram. Thus, they only rake in an annual gross sales of P400,000 to P500,000.
DTI-Davao del Sur officer-in-charge Eulogio C. Orevillo said with the provision of the necessary SSF, it is projected that Jorifa will be able to process 20,500 kilograms of dried coffee beans per year, with a recovery rate of 41 percent.

“With the buying price ranging from P82 to P120 per kilogram, Jorifa’s annual gross sales would reach P2.4 million, which will truly give a boost to their operations,” he said.

The P82 per kilogram buying price is being enjoyed by dried green coffee beans producers from October to December, while the buying price reaches P120 per kilogram from May until June.

“Our coffee farmers really have to optimize the full potential of their product. It’s not enough to produce coffee berries. You need to find a way on how to give some value-adding to it. Thus, the existence of this project,” he said.

The SSF program of DTI was launched last year with the aim to address the gaps and bottlenecks in the value chain.

These SSF projects are common service facilities or production centers for certain processes to give MSMEs access to a better technology and more sophisticated equipment to accelerate their bid for competitiveness and help them graduate to a next level where they could tap a better and wider market and be integrated in the global supply chain.

Last year, DTI-Davao del Sur was able to turn-over a total of five SSF projects, out of the 13 approved. For this year, the office targets to approve eight. (DTI-11/JenMendoza)

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