Bolivian government inaugurates plant to industrialize quinoa

The Bolivian authorities launched a plant on the eve (Wednesday) to industrialize the quinoa produced in the country, which required an investment equivalent to about US $ 7.9 million.

The industry was located in an area of ​​8,800 square meters in the municipality of Soracachi, in the Andean region of Oruro, one of the three quinoa producers in Bolivia.

The Bolivian president, Luis Arce, inaugurated the work with the goal of making it the first step to achieve “the full industrialization of quinoa.”

The plant will produce food such as quinoa flakes and flours, but the ruler wants the saponin, a component with cleaning qualities contained in the grain, to also be used to make detergents.

“We must produce products with greater added value because look at what has happened, from Bolivia we have promoted the consumption of quinoa to the entire world and we are the country that has benefited the least,” Arce lamented.

The president assured quinoa producers that the Executive will be in charge of promoting quinoa and its derivatives in the local market and also abroad.

In turn, the general manager of the state-owned Bolivian Food and Derivatives Company (EBA), Javier Freire, highlighted that this industry is the nineteenth industrializer to be inaugurated by this entity, which is “a source of pride” because it is a plant ” that has state-of-the-art technology ”to produce“ quality products ”.

According to Freire, Bolivia produces more than 61,000 tons of quinoa annually, of which 34,000 are exported, some 17,000 are consumed in the domestic market and there is a surplus of 10,000 “that do not have a safe market.”

“Small producers are economically affected by illegal purchases” of that surplus quinoa “made by neighboring countries in a context of smuggling,” the official warned.

Now that surplus will feed the plant, which has a combination of technologies for optimal and environmentally friendly processes for the hulling and washing of quinoa, he said.

The industry has the capacity to process 7,300 tons of the grain and convert it into pearl quinoa, another 600 tons to produce quinoa in flakes and the same amount to transform it into bland quinoa and 400 tons more to make flour, Freire explained.

In addition, it will benefit some 9,000 families that produce quinoa and will generate 156 direct jobs and around 780 indirect ones, according to the EBA manager.

Freire specified that the plant is part of a “comprehensive project” that includes Oruro, La Paz and Potosí, the three producing departments, for which he announced that in March it is expected to open quinoa collection centers in these regions, with a capacity of a thousand tons each.