By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A MAJOR pig farm project on Grand Bahama is still moving forward with more than $1 million already invested to-date, an executive telling Tribune Business that bureaucratic hold-ups had frustrated plans to create up to 200 direct jobs.

Michael Douglas, director of business development at Rose Farmland Ltd, said the company’s agro-ecological meat processing initiative would provide 200 jobs with numerous spin-off opportunities.

He told Tribune Business: “We are at the point where the land is being surveyed. We are having problems, bureaucratic problems. Every office you walk into it seems like no one understands the process we went through in order to obtain the approvals for the land.

“That seems to be an ongoing thing when you go into individual governmental departments to get permits and that sort of thing. That’s something we have been dealing with. Everyone seems to want to reajudicate with me so they can put their stamp of approval on it. That does not make any sense to me, and if that continues I’m going to be in big trouble.

“They don’t seem to understand the context by which I came to obtain that grant. These are the problems we are having, and in so much as that is concerned, the law says that I should be able to walk into a department and, if I’m granted an approval from one department, I should get it from another in seven days.”

Mr Douglas added: “I understand that there are procedures, but if I am presenting you with the relevant documents from your departments, I don’t understand what the problem is.

“What we lack is a method by which these developments can move quickly. I am over $1 million in this thing already. It’s difficult to maintain people's confidence and maintain my suppliers. Most of the stuff we are putting in down there has to be manufactured. The manufacturers have dates to do things because I’m not the only client they have, so every time I skip a manufacturing deadline I have to pay money. No one seems to understand that.”

Having obtained the land grant approval, Mr Douglas said he expected construction to start later this year if all goes well.

“We got the grant approval,” he confirmed. “We are moving forward with the surveying of the land, and shortly thereafter we are going to start construction; that’s going to be later this year.

“By the end of the summer we should have that land surveyed and parcelled out. By the first quarter of next year we should at least have three to four of our buildings up so we can begin populating the farm.

Rose Farmland is proposing the creation of a 600-sow farrow in Phase I, followed by vertically integrated slaughter and packaging facilities in Phase II. The project will be located in High Rock, Grand Bahama.

Mr Douglas added: “We are going to have a 600-sow unit. We are looking at 17,000 market hogs a year. We are looking more at the value-added access of marketing our products, more so than simply retail.

Phase one will be less labour intensive, with specific hires. You put phase one and two together; you are talking about maybe 200 people, but there are going to be numerous spin-offs opportunities.”

Mr Douglas said Rose Farmland had spent two-and-a-half years trying to get the waste water aspect of the project dealt with.

He added: “It took us almost two-and-a-half years to get the waste part of it done. We thought that was important because we want to reduce the waste and recycle that waste. The technology for that is not free.”