BDV chairman Dr Kenneth Guscott and AIBFA president Winfield Murray signing the memorandum of agreement on Monday. Standing (from left): Leo Williams, BDV; Delano Franklyn, legal consultant on the project; Ivy Lawson, BDV and Denzil McKenzie, Legal Counsel, BDV.

The All Island Bee Farmers Association (AIBFA) has entered into a partnership with the Boston Diaspora Ventures (BDV), an organisation run by Jamaican expatriates living in the Boston area, to process and sell domestically made honey.

Under the deal, which was signed on Monday, BDV will inject US$50,000 (J$3.55 million) cash into the local operations, including the rennovation of a bottling plant for an estimated cost of J$2.3 million, and provide a loan facility of US$100,000 (J$7.1 million).

The AIBFA had built the honey bottling plant in Linstead, St Catherine but had no formal arrangement with the government to lease the land. So, for its part in the deal it will have to secure a formal arrangement for the partnership to move ahead.

"AIBFA agrees to negotiate and enter into a lease of the Bottling Plant with the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands on the most favorable terms possible," said the memorandum of agreement.

AIBFA president Winfield Murray told the Business Observer that he expects to get a progress report from the commissioner of lands today and is hoping for the matter to be resolved by next week.

The joint venture will operate under the name Logwood Distribution Ltd, and will purchase honey from bee farmers, process, bottle and market the honey for the benefit of the farmers and investors of BDV.

Both parties believe that the joint venture, Logwood, will offer bee farmers a reliable market for their products and thus give them a steady cash flow.

The prices, which the joint venture says will be kept competitive, will be announced weekly. The company promises to pay farmers within 14 days of receiving the product at the bottling plant.

Logwood will have the discretion to; establish wholesale prices for the products, determine where the products will be distributed, determine which entity or entities will distribute the products, establish the percentage of the products that will be sold locally and that which will be exported to foreign markets, and to make such other decisions that Logwood deems to be in the best interest of the Joint Venture.

In the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands 2005 Census of the bee farmers' industry, the investigators found that although the number of bee farmers had declined from 1,206 in 1998 to 714 in 2005, "[t]he overall size of the Industry measured in terms of production of honey and other bee products has actually risen. The rise in production has been fed by significant increases in productivity which has increased 121 per cent since 1998 and 341 per cent since 1991." Executive Summary Page 1. The AIBFA found that since 2005, the number of bee-keepers has increased by 335 or 47 per cent over the 2005 census figures bringing the total number of bee farmers to approximately 1,300.

According to the AIBFA's seven-year plan announced at its 16th Annual General Meeting in 2006, by 2013, the bee-keeping industry will be coordinated, market-driven, commercially and environmentally sustainable for its participants who are supplying quality products/services to an informed community. Among the stated goals of the AIBFA is to double the annual output of honey per hive from 7.5 gallons to 15 gallons.

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