Regional Food Hub halfway complete – Min Mustapha

The construction of the Regional Food Hub being built at Yarrowkabra, along the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, is roughly halfway complete. It is on course to be finished by the end of the year, Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha has said.

“As I am speaking now, approximately 50 per cent of the work has been completed. It’s ongoing,” the minister said in an interview.

Local contractors hired to do the job are expected to wrap up their portion of the work by the end of September. Once that phase is done, he said, Blumberg Grain, a U.S.-based agriculture company, will move in to install a cold storage facility and the remaining systems that will bring the hub into operation.

The facility marks the next stage of a project that was years in the making. Phase One began in 2023, and in July last year, the government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Blumberg Grain and Logistics.

When complete, the hub will be built to international standards.

According to the ministry, it will feature modern grain silos, refrigerated storage, container-loading facilities and digital inventory systems, and is projected to reduce post-harvest losses by up to 30 per cent, supporting increased exports of rice, corn, poultry feed and processed feeds to CARICOM markets.

Minister Mustapha explained that the facility is being built with a single purpose in mind: keeping more of the value of Guyana’s produce inside the country and across the wider region.

The hub will act as a central collection and export point, drawing in produce from farmers and channelling it to Caribbean markets to help close the gap targeted under the “25 by 2025” initiative, the regional drive to cut CARICOM’s food import bill by a quarter.

“When we have this food hub up and running, it will be very active, and we’ll purchase products from farmers around the country, and that will be there to export overseas,” Minister Mustapha added.

He also tied the facility to the wider work of the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC), which has been linking farmers without a market to agents who can move their produce.

The investment sits at the heart of a food-security agenda championed by President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who has repeatedly cast Guyana as the country best placed to feed the region.