CASTRIES, St Lucia (CMC) — St Lucia is moving to revitalise its honey industry after the island’s honey cluster development plan has been successful in securing funding.

A government statement said that the apiary industry has great financial potential and Export St Lucia and the Ministry of Agriculture with assistance from Compete Caribbean have initiated a plan to develop and grow the industry.

“We welcomed this initiative as it provided invaluable capacity building for St Lucia. It also brought about funding which will assist in the development and growth of the Apiary Industry, a very potent industry, one which is growing globally, especially with the health conscious,” said Export St Lucia chief executive officer, Sunita Daniel.

“Our desire is to increase production of high quality natural honey which is export ready and globally competitive. We are extremely thankful to all the stakeholders for their hard work and especially Compete Caribbean for this initiative,” she added.

The statement said that the by-products of honey production are also very valuable. “Apitoxins and bee-venom are used in the treatment of many nerve-borne illnesses; flower pollen and royal jelly are used by men as aphrodisiacs; beeswax is used a lot by cosmetologists.

Earlier this year, Export St Lucia said that some regional Business Support Organisations and private sector businesses were the beneficiaries of a cluster development training programme by Compete Caribbean that was designed to increase the capacity of the attendees towards the development of clusters in industries that showed the potential to benefit from clustering.

The statement said that following the exercise, seven regional projects, including St Lucia’s Honey Cluster Development Plan, were successful in securing funding.