Multimillion-Dollar Cold Storage Facility For Manchester Farmers

Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Hon. Floyd Green, on Thursday (February 20), broke ground for the building of a modern cold storage facility at a cost of $123,823,965 (approximately US$814,631).

It will be established on the site of the greenhouse cluster in Content, Kirkvine in Manchester, and will benefit more than 1,500 farmers and producers.

The project is being undertaken by the Government of Jamaica through the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) under its Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI)II initiative,

“Two 40-foot containers will be retrofitted to provide 135 cubic metres of cold storage capacity. Additionally, we will have another 40-foot container retrofitted to provide 67 cubic metres of dry storage capacity. We are doing it for all the different types of produce that we have in this area,” Minister Green said.

In addition to the cold and dry storage sections, there will also be a processing area for weighing, washing, sorting and grading the produce.

A photovoltaic solar system will be installed to supply energy needs.

“We will also be covering the cold storage so the roof structure will be utilised for rainwater harvesting. We will further bolster the capacity of this Content Cluster by providing them with a storage tank to hold an additional 4,700 gallons of water,” Mr. Green said.

Production began at Content in 2018 with a yield of 45,000 pounds from the 20 greenhouses. The farmers produce bell peppers, grape and cherry tomatoes as well as purple cabbage and broccoli.

Managing Director, Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), Omar Sweeney, said the agency has been involved with the Content Cluster since 2010 when REDI-I started, resulting from an agreement between the Government and the World Bank.

“That agreement was to improve the livelihoods of people. The Bank offers more than money; it offers technical expertise such as resources for infrastructure such as this. Since 2020, there has been REDI-II, which focuses on many of the same things REDI-I did, but to advance the approach,” he noted.

Mr. Sweeney said the cold storage facility is expected to improve the agriculture supply chain, manage surplus and improve resilience in the sector.

Lead farmer at Content Greenhouse Cluster, Earl Williams, said farmers can now rest easier, knowing that they will soon have a centralised hub to safely store their produce to reduce post-harvest losses.

He noted that the Content Cluster has the ability to put more than 160,000 pounds of produce in the cold storage facility and sell to the market in an eight-month period.

The Kirkvine Cold Storage Facility will help to enhance Jamaica’s agricultural resilience by reducing post-harvest losses, ensuring consistent food supply and improve adaptability to climate change.

The integrated storage and processing hub will ensure fresh produce availability during off-seasons and after natural disasters, bolstering food and nutritional security.

By providing a centralised storage and processing hub, this facility will streamline logistics and stabilise prices, benefiting both producers and consumers.

The project will be implemented in partnership with the Agro-Investment Corporation (AIC), in a bid to strengthen the agri-business value chain.