Vinegar project to help in marketing fruit production

In a feature on November 22nd, L’Orient Le Jour daily highlighted a current initiative launched by USAID in 2015 to promote the manufacture of vinegar in Lebanon. The project, expected to be completed by 2017, presents one alternative to dispose of the swarmed local apple and grapes production, the newspaper said. With an overall budget of USD 30 thousand, this sub-project comes as part of the Lebanon Industry Value Chain Development (LIVCD) project and is aimed to help vinegar producers, particularly in the Beqaa region, achieve maximum proceeds. To this end, the US Agency has benefited from the expertise of vinegar specialists from the US, namely Lawrence Diggs, to introduce farmers to the latest technical know-how in the field, with special focus on the processing and storage areas. In the same vain, engineer Sa3eed Jad3un, deputy director general of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in Beqaa, indicated that there is some 40 thousand tons of unsold apples alone. This amount, he explained, is unlikely to be absorbed by vinegar manufacturers especially that imports of vinegar to Lebanon have gone up by 40% between 2012 and 2015, according to customs figures. (L’Orient Le Jour, November 22, 2016)