Guinness Cameroon, local subsidiary of the British food processing firm Diageo, which used 2,700 metric tons of local raw materials in 2014, for the production of its alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages (Guinness, Guinness Smooth, Malta Guinness, Satzenbrau, and Harp), will see its needs in local produce increase fivefold to reach 17,000 metric tons in 2018, a jump of over 600% compared to its current needs.

This information revealed by Christian Pouth, Corporate Relations Director at Diageo for Central and West Africa, is great news for the country's producers of sorghum, maize and cassava, the main local raw materials listed by Guinness in Cameroon. In view of this substantial increase in local produce, Mr Pouth continued, "the installation work for a industrial cooking tank are currently ongoing at our factory, with the goal of promoting a more important use of local materials such as sorghum, maize and cassava".

With this in mind, we recall that Guinness Cameroon was the very first food processing company to sign with the Cameroonian government, on 17th December 2013 in Yaoundé, a partnership agreement within the framework of PIDMA (Investment and Development of agricultural markets project). The target of this 5-year project funded to the tune of FCfa50 billion by the World Bank, is to boost local production of cassava, sorghum and maize in order to supply the food processing industries of the country, like the brewing industry.

While waiting for the beneficial effects of PIDMA that was launched this year, Guinness Cameroon which has already invested about FCfa3 billion in a sorghum production project in northern Cameroon has bought about FCfa1.5 billion worth of local raw materials since 2009, stressed Christian Pouth. "Our ambition is to get supplied principally in local raw materials by 2018. Our global investment, by that time, would be in excess of FCfa2 billion in order to provide ourselves with the human and technological resources necessary to the success of this project".