News

Bamboo Tomato Ketchup is the latest innovation from bamboo that highlights that opportunities are ripe for investors to take advantage of by-products in the growing sector.

The product was developed by head of Jamdun’ Food Processing, Chevaughn Bowen.

Already, there is organic bamboo charcoal on the market – with a factory recently opened in Pembroke Hall, St Mary – and several other products are being looked at by the Bamboo and Indigenous Materials Advisory Council (BIMAC), organized by the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ).

Speaking with JIS News, Bowen said he got the idea to make the bamboo tomato ketchup while in discussion with Director of Special Projects at the BSJ, Gladstone Rose, who heads the Government’s bamboo programme.

The young innovator, who copped the 2010 Jamaica Manufacturers’ Association (JMA) top prize for his hot and spicy barbe‐fry sauce, hopes young people who have innovative business ideas, ensure those ideas are written, and placed in the marketplace for development.

“Idea on paper is no idea at all. Putting a prototype together, and trying to get it out there in the market is best. Your idea sitting on paper, it makes no sense. I believe that everybody coming from university should have that state of mind, to become innovative,” he said.

For State Minister in the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Sharon Ffolkes-Abrahams, the product (bamboo ketchup) is the first of its kind in the world.

“This is one of the products for diversification, our own bamboo indigenous ketchup. There are several things that we can do with bamboo,” she told JIS News.

She continued by adding, “There are the options of bamboo pharmaceutical, bamboo charcoal, bamboo flooring, furniture, bamboo to feed animals, and the bamboo fabric that is in demand, fetching a high price on the world market.”

Source: http://loopjamaica.com/2014/12/31/latest-jamaica-news-business-tomato-ketchup-pportunities-ripe-under-bamboo-jampro/

Published Date: December 31st, 2014