Growers in Nampula, the leading cashew nut producer in Mozambique, harvested 44,917 tonnes this season, up 18% from 38, 177 tonnes in 2014/15, the Public Ledger understands. According to the report, most of the nuts will be processed by 11 processing plants that are in operation in the province, while two plants are still out of operation.
Mozambique produced 104,472 tonnes of officially registered cashew nuts in 2015 / 16, over 4% more than the officially planned and 28% more than the 81,240 tonnes harvested in 2014/15. However, it is hoped that domestic cashew nut production will reach 120,000 tonnes in the ongoing 2016/17 season.
According to recent studies, around 50% of cashew nuts are not formally registered and are sold in informal markets.
In the 2015/16 season, the domestic industry purchased around 32,000 tonnes of cashew nuts, or around 31% of formally traded cashews. This represents a 10 % increase from the previous season where 29.351 tonnes were locally processed.
Mozambique produced 2.92 million cashew tree plantlets during H1, which is 73% of the total plan for the October 2015 - 2016 season out of the total 1.88 million plantlets had been distributed in the first half f the year.
Source: MITC, 16 December 2016