A Look Inside BMDC’s Profitable Produce Operation

Before imported produce reaches store shelves, much of it passes through the Belize Marketing and Development Corporation. But growing complaints from wholesalers and retailers about BMDC’s prices have raised questions about what happens behind the warehouse doors. On Monday, News Five’s Paul Lopez toured the corporation’s Orange Walk headquarters for an inside look at its daily operations, its role in the produce market and the system behind one of Belize’s most profitable statutory bodies.

 

Paul Lopez, Reporting

Inside BMDC’s packaging facility, Dayel Carvajal works with confidence and precision. He knows every step of the process, where each tool belongs and the standards he must meet. What makes his story remarkable is that Carvajal has been blind since birth, but he refuses to let that define what he can accomplish.

 

Dayel Carvajal, Employee, BMDC

“I have already gotten use to the layout and I have been blind since birth. I am use to it.”

 

Paul Lopez

“What would you hope to inspire in anyone who sees an interview like this or see you working in this manner?”

 

Dayel Carvajal

“That anyone can do a job if they wanted to. Disabilities don’t put you behind or define what you can or can’t do.”

 

Carvajal’s resilience reflects the story of BMDC itself. Administrator Valentin Carillo says the corporation has spent the past four years confronting challenges and finding ways to move forward.

 

Valentin Carillo, Administrator, BMDC

“BMDC, the marketing board, has been existing from the 1950, fifty years and seventy six years and never, ever you would have seen something that is happening here like what BMDC is in the last four years.”

 

From its packaging facility…

  

Valentin Carillo

“We have beans, we have two pound sugar, two pounds rice, five pound sugar and twenty pound rice. These are packaged here.”

 

…to a coconut processing plant operated on the compound by Cococarib.

 

Abizur Ramirez, Production Manager, Cococarib

“As you can see the first step is the de-husk.  From there it is placed on a bin. The bin has a solution that it prevents the corrosion of the coconut. Then from there it is being polished, you can see the machine, that is the first stage, it is being polished.”

 

After three separate solution baths, the coconuts are left to dry before moving to the packaging facility for distribution.

 

Abizur Ramirez

“Any direction that the company tries to take is bio green. It is being packed. It is screened and being palletized. From palletized we load it in the reefer to have zero contamination or cross contamination with the product.”

 

The distribution process for any product at BMDC begins at this newly built trucking facility that could facilitate multiple delivery trucks at the same time.

 

Valentin Carillo

“Where you are sitting down here, this was a warehouse, slaughtering house facility. There were rice, our sugar was right here, infested with rodents, that was what BMDC was, here in Belize. That was the bodegas and the type of quality of structures we have had.”

 

The investment and upgrades are evident and undeniable. BMDC’s latest venture is a restaurant where it can sell value-added products.

 

Dayel Carvajal

“So we start at eight and we end at five oclock in the evening.”

 

Paul Lopez

“And how does the salary you make from this job improves the quality of your life?”

 

Dayel Carvajal

“In a way it allows me to be a bit more independent, pay bills, and maintain myself or household.”

 

BMDC remains under scrutiny over its prices and influence in the produce market, but the corporation says its progress cannot be ignored. It points to expanding operations, major investments and new jobs as evidence that it is changing what a statutory body can accomplish in Belize. Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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