BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines – From being known as the country’s leading rice and corn-producing province, Isabela may well again be tagged as one of the nation’s paper capitals with the anticipated establishment of a $100-million paper mill.
To be constructed in Cauayan City early next year, the paper mill will be partly financed by foreign investors and an American-Korean consortium, which eyed the city’s former Monterey farm in San Pablo village.
The project, Isabela Gov. Faustino Dy said, would utilize corn stalks and rice hay, usually treated as agriculture wastes, as major component in the production of paper.
The company, he said, will buy these agricultural wastes from farmers, which would mean additional income for them, besides generating local employment opportunities.
“The raw materials to be made into paper will be from hay and corn stalks, which are very abundant in the province,” said Dy, expressing optimism that the venture would further prop up Isabela’s economy.
The presence of the paper mill, he said, would enable the province to pursue further its thrust in agro-industrial development, which it started with the construction of Asia’s largest corn processing plant worth P740 million in Reina Mercedes town owned by the Mindanao Grains Processing Co. and the Philippine Maize Federation Inc.
This is in addition to the P6-billion bio-ethanol plant being put up in San Mariano town by Green Future Innovation.
The plant, when fully established, will be capable of producing some 100,000 liters of ethanol a day from sugarcane grown in an 11,000-hectare land in San Mariano town.
The country’s third largest province, Isabela is the country’s biggest producer of corn and second to Nueva Ecija in palay output.
“With all these developments, we are optimistic that besides being the country’s major agriculture area, we can also be a highly industrialized province,” Dy said.