World Grain - November 2008 - 52

FEATURE: NAMILCO OPERATING 'AT FULL THROTTLE'

Namilco's laboratory to the market.
Toasted wheat germ, cream of wheattype hot cereal, pesto mix, multigrain
mix, and herb and garlic mix are being
developed. The company is looking at
cake and pancake mixes, but box packaging presents a constraint.
Namilco's traditional lead product is
Thunderbolt flour, designed for extreme
mixing techniques and extended kneading. It is sold in ½-, 1- and 2-kg package
sizes as well as 100-pound bags. Namilco adds vitamins and nutrients such as
folic acid, and minerals such as iron, to
Thunderbolt flour and other products,
which Sukhai said the population needs
for good health.
One-hundred-pound bags of allpurpose flour still account for 22% of
Namilco's production, going mainly to
Guyana's remote gold and diamond mining areas. The company is working to
convert those sales to small packages.
For the health conscious, Namilco
recently introduced whole-wheat and
high-fiber flour for bakers. Sukhai says
both have quality and freshness that
offshore competitors cannot match.
Namilco is also supplying flour for fried
chicken batter to new Kentucky Fried
Chicken, Popeye's, Church's and other
chicken franchises in the capital city

of Georgetown, saving the franchisors
from importing.
EXPORTS UNDER WAY
In addition to expanding the Guyana
market, Namilco has started exporting
products such as Maid Marian Roti and
Pholourie mixes and self-rising flour to
Guyanese communities in the United
States and Canada, and is looking toward selling to border towns in neighboring Brazil and Venezuela. Guyana
and Brazil are working on a free trade
agreement and are completing construction of a bridge at Lethem, in southwest
Guyana, which will connect the rough
road between Georgetown and Boa Vista, a city in northern Brazil about 100
kilometers from the border. Namilco
will then serve as Boa Vista's closest
and cheapest source of fresh flour.
With the coming of the economic cooperation group, Caribbean Community
and Common Market (CARICOM), trade
in several vital commodities is becoming
more aggressive. This especially holds
true as regards flour coming from Trinidad and Barbados. NAMILCO has had
to compete with this regional flour. Trinidad's mills are able to produce their flour
product at a cheaper rate due to the low
electricity costs in that country. One of

CLEAN CONTROL

A Namilco mill operator bags flour on a Buhler
bagging machine.

the three mills in Trinidad is governmentowned (51%). There has been concern
raised that one or more of the regional
mills may be dumping their flour product into Guyana. NAMILCO took this issue to the Government of Guyana and to
CARICOM asking that they investigate
any such dumping and put a stop to it if,
indeed, it was true. Guyana has subsequently experienced less imported flour
from the region. Nevertheless, Sukhai
said Namilco supplies better quality and

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World Grain - November 2008

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