Belize Foods purchased by C.D.C.

The Commonwealth Development Corporation has completed its layout of Belize’s citrus processing industry with the purchase of Belize Foods Ltd. The British based company, which had previously purchased the Citrus Company of Belize, also owns Barton Creek Farms and a large citrus plantation near Big Falls, Toledo. In recent years the rapidly expanding citrus industry had suffered from low world prices and both companies and growers were heavily in debt. The C.D.C. investment will provide much needed capital for expansion as well as produce economies of scale from the consolidation of two processors into one. The company will now manage some ten thousand acres of groves and in season employ fifteen hundred workers. According to a press release C.D.C. is now in negotiation with the European Investment Bank to find funding for the Belize Citrus Growers Association to purchase ten percent of the company.