Govt to construct modern cashew processing facility

To be constructed in Nanyamba District, the envisaged facility is expected to have a capacity of processing a total of 300,000 tons of cashew annually.

According to the agriculture minister Hussein Bashe, the planned factory will help the government in attaining the vision of ensuring that starting from 2026/2027, all exported cashew is processed.

As part of the project’s preparations, minister Bashe said the ministry has already allocated 1,000 acres in the district for the project.

"The central mission behind the establishment of the plant is to attain a total additional value chain of the crop," he unveiled.

He said cashew was among the key economic cash crops that thrive in abundant within the country but the sub- sector has yet to fetch the deserved profit due to several handicaps, including absence of enough and modern processing factories.

“We're missing out a possible opportunity to generate lucrative profits, in terms of foreign currencies, as we are exporting most of our cashew in raw; the negative trend which provides loop holes for others to benefit from our cashew," he observed.

"We're expecting to equip the factory with the state- of - the art machineries in order to effectively process and produce diverse products from raw cashew nuts, including charcoal," he said.

He further said the government will continue to engage the private sector in ensuring effective and close supervision to attain the needed sense of ownership and responsibility.

"Among others, installation of the envisaged facility is expected to play meaningful role in assisting the farmers to realise sober profit from their farming executives," he insisted.

Alfred Francis, the Director General (DG) of Cashew Board of Tanzania (CBT) told the Guardian that the crop is now being produced in more than 12 regions across the country.

"Production of cashew nuts continues to gain prosperous momentum by attracting a number of the farmers in the said regions, though the crop is currently mainly produced in Mtwara, Lindi, Coastal and Ruvuma," he said.

For his part, the CBT's Acting Director of Marketing and Quality Control, Revelian Ngaiza said the export markets for cashew were increasing with promising prices.

 "For instance, in Ivory Coast, the opening ceremony of the cashew sales season took take place on February 27, 2023 and the indicative price of raw cashews is between US$1,280 to US$1,300 per ton," he unveiled.

In the same vein, he added that in Ghana, the new season has already started and the price of raw cashews is estimated to be US$1,300 per ton for cashews with a quality of "50-51 lbs" and the price of US$1,325 for a ton of cashews with a quality of "52 lbs" ” for the Indian market.

Tanzania is well known for its cashew nut production, the nuts are nicknamed “grey gold” due to the high return on investment.

However, despite such excellence in the production of the cash crop, only 5 percent of the raw cashew nuts are being processed locally, with the other 95 percent being exported all the way to Vietnam or India for value addition before reaching consumer markets of Europe and America.