New machine will help bean exports

A new machine to aid in the processing of beans has been installed in Spanish Lookout. The pre-cleaning machine, which will be used by bean farmers in the area, separates cracked beans from whole kernels and is expected to make exports more efficient. Minister of Agriculture, Dan Silva, and company chairman Levy Penner were on hand for Tuesday’s ceremony.

Levy Penner, Chairman, Belcar Exports

“It will help us to clean the beans faster. Before we had just small pre-cleaners, we could clean about eight hundred pounds per hour, so it was slow. With this machine we can go up to about ten thousand dollars in black eyes, red kidney about six thousand. So it will improve us with speeding up, cleaning it faster, get the containers full quicker.”

Dan Silva Minister of Agriculture

“In black eye peas this area is the largest producer of black eye peas which we export to many different countries in the world, South America and the Caribbean.”

Q: How much beans does Belize export?

Dan Silva

“Last year we exported about four and a half million dollars worth of beans last year to the CARICOM region, some to Peru, but most to the CARICOM region.”

Q: With the addition of this new technology how will it benefit farmers here in Spanish Lookout and Belize on a whole?

Dan Silva

“This new facility here will allow us to export more quality beans and this is very important. We are speaking with a company in the U.S. about selling Belize beans under their label and to do that it has to be quality and this machine will allow us to do that.”

The company, Belize Caribbean Import Export, Belcar, has a representative in Trinidad and Tobago and will be looking to that market for increased sales.