The Taganito Mining Corporation Nickel Asia Corporation (TMC-NAC) handed over Wednesday a PHP20-million rice mill complex facility to the Claver Red Mountain Cooperative (CREMACO) in Claver town, Surigao del Norte province.

The rice mill complex in the town’s Barangay Daywan is equipped with a milling building, a mechanical dyer, a warehouse, and a parking space for hauling operations.

In a phone interview, TMC-NAC community relations manager Mark Vincent Junel Felias said the facility will benefit CREMACO’s 35 farmer-members from the town’s six barangays.

The initiative, he said, is proof that partnerships between local people’s organizations and private companies can create positive change for the community.

“The engagement with the CREMACO started in 2017 through the strengthening of their organization and as part of the corporate social responsibility of the company. The rice farmers in the town are part of the stakeholders of the company,” he said.

In 2019, the TMC-NAC provided the group with farm equipment composed of a rice harvester, a tractor, two transplanters, and a single-pass milling machine.

“The CREMACO has been supplying our direct employees and contractors with rice since 2019 which allowed the cooperative to increase its income,” Felias said.

As a project counterpart, the cooperative donated its own nearly a hectare land worth PHP8 million where the rice mill complex is being housed.

Felias said the cooperative managed to buy the land on an installment basis, with payments coming from the income of their rice trading and retailing business.

In a statement Wednesday, CREMACO chair Joel Oinal acknowledged the TMC-NAC for its continued support to the cooperative.

With the rice mill facility, he said the cooperative can now expand its markets and increase production. (PNA)