The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) along with other stakeholders joined forces to strengthen national and local collaborative efforts to promote, develop, and sustain the growth of the Philippine coco coir industry in the recent 2nd National Coco Coir Summit.
“By 2016, we intend to place the country’s coco coir industry in the world’s top 3 exporter of coco coir,” DTI Undersecretary Merly M. Cruz said.
“We need a very strong convergence to achieve this. We need support industries such as the transport, machineries and ancillaries; small coconut farmers, cooperatives, associations, processors, exporters, and traders; government agencies and units such as the DTI, Department of Agriculture-Philippine Coconut Authority (DA-PCA), Department of Science and Technology (DOST), Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF), and local government units (LGUs); and the Philippine coconut industry cluster team for the coconut coir and peat,” Cruz said.
She stipulated three objectives in achieving the industry’s target: to develop and expand domestic supply-base for coco coir; to strengthen access to domestic and export market information; to strengthen market linkage among actors within the value chain.
Cruz added that the group has drawn up goals to achieve these objective which are: USD 50M in exports, P1.7B in domestic sales, P2B in investments, 200,000 farmers and 450 SMEs assisted, and 10,000 jobs created.
According to a data from the PCA, the Philippines lags behind in terms of coconut production and volume of coir product exports compared to other coconut producing countries like Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and Indonesia in 2011.
The data reveals that the Philippines produces only 6,037 metric tons (MT) of coco coir products for export from the 15.245B nuts harvested from its 3.562M hectares of land. On the other hand, Sri Lanka produces 120,616 MT of coco coir export products out of 0.395M hectares of land that produces 2.707B nuts.
From 2010 to 2012, the contribution per coco coir commodity to the country’s export include: raw or baled fiber (62%), coco peat or dust (25%), coco twines or cordage (11%), and other products (2%), Cruz said.
Cruz pointed out that our major export markets for coco coir and peat products are China, Japan, Taiwan, USA for the raw or baled fiber; China, Korea, Singapore, Japan for peat and dust; China, EU, UAE, US, and Asian countries like India, Indonesia, Vietnam for coco twines or cordage; and Malaysia and US for other products such as carpets.
She discussed market prospects for the coco coir and peat which includes: coir geotextile, coconets, coco fascines for domestic market in DPWH projects and mining sites and for export in China, US, and Asia; coir mattresses and rubberized coir for export and domestic markets; coir tufted mats for the domestic market and export market in US, EU and Asia; coir twines and yarns for the domestic market as input to coco net weaving and tufting and for the export market in China, Asia, Europe and USA; and coco peat as a multi-purpose soil conditioner and growing medium for the European market and local nurseries, and landscaping.
“We have to be ambitious in coming up with business models for the coco coir industry to boost local production, and be competitive in the international market,” DTI Assistant Secretary Romulo V.
