On January 24, 2018, Kribi Autonomous Port (PAK) and Atlantic Cocoa, subsidiary of Atlantic Group, has signed the first occupancy agreement authorizing the cocoa company to build a cocoa processing unit inside PAK, official sources revealed.
According to Georges Wilson, managing director of Atlantic Cocoa, the unit will be able to process 48,000 tons of cocoa bean per year and, the capacity is extensible to 64,000 tons.
He also explained that the CFA30 billion investment was just one of the investment program of Atlantic Group in Cameroon. There is ‘also the development of industrial plantations, including agricultural centres of excellence in the cocoa production basins in Cameroon, on 25,000 hectares”, he said.
Through this investment program, Koné Dossongui, the Ivorian mogul who owns Atlantic Cocoa, will invest CFA50 billion in Cameroon.
However, the managing director of Atlantic cocoa explained that though the construction works should start soon, Atlantic group’s investment program faces some challenges.
“To date, the journey has not been easy, with just partial obtention of tax and customs exemptions and other promised facilities. These challenges affect our investment and financing plan. The delay in the opening of shipping lines to PAK has somehow affected our deadline and created additional logistics costs. We expect and we do hope that these major issues will be resolved in the coming days in order to let us start, peacefully, the exploitation in the coming five months”, Georges Wilson said.
It should be recalled that the project for the creation of an industrial cocoa consortium in Cameroon has been announced on July 29, 2015, by Koné Dossongui, during an audience with Cameroon’s minister of economy. With the financial support of BGFI Bank, the project is now in its implementation phase.
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