New Kampot Salt Farm Has Big Ambitions

TOEK CHHOU DISTRICT, Kampot province – A donor-backed project launched here on Saturday aims to produce Cambodia’s first export-quality sea salt and invigorate the struggling local salt industry. In a ceremony among Kampot’s vast fields of coastal saltpans and low levees, company representatives from Asia Salt (Cambodia) Co., Ltd. inaugurated a $2.9 million venture, which hopes to produce 20,000 tons of salt each year for export. Asia Salt (Cambodia) Co., Ltd- a local subsidiary of a joint venture between South Korean Company EEE Korea and InfraCo Asia Development Pte. Ltd.-is financed by the British, Swiss and Australian governments. The first shipment of salt bound for South Korea is expected to leave between July and September. InfraCo’s non-executive director Peter Bird said the project would employ 350 local people on a 120-hectare salt farm. … “We are conserving about 30 acres [about 12 hectares] of coastal mangrove for coastline protection and we’re maintaining an ecological zone,” he [Peter Bird] added. … According to Um Chhun, secretary of the Kep-Kampot Salt Producers Community, the region has about 4,500 hectares of salt farms, together producing 80,000 tons of salt last year- a low yield due to heavy rains. “The quality of Cambodian salt is still low compared to neighboring countries, Thailand and Vietnam, so we can’t export. We sell it locally,” he said. Mr Chhun said it would be difficult for producers to move up to modern techniques which are costly to implement. “It’s very expensive. For just 1 square meter it costs $7,” he said. …

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