A state-owned Vietnamese rubber company inaugurated a multimillion-dollar factory in Kampong Thom province Wednesday to process rubber grown at nearby plantations, provincial governor Uth Sam On said Thursday.
Mr. Sam On said the Tan Bien-Kompong Thom Rubber Development Company had invested about $10 million to build the rubber latex processing plant in Santuk district’s Kraya commune, where it also operates its own plantation.
“It was inaugurated yesterday to process locally supplied raw rubber and its own raw rubber,” he said, adding that the firm would employ 200 workers at the 4-hectare plant.
The facility, which has a yearly capacity of 3,000 tons of processed rubber, would be a boon to locals, the governor said.
“We expect that local people will get benefits from the investment through labor [opportunities] and farmers will benefit by producing food like vegetables and meat that they can sell to workers at the factory,” he said.
In 2009, armed security personnel evicted 602 families from Kraya commune to make way for the company’s plantation.
Of those families, Mr. Sam On said, 136 have yet to receive a replacement plot of farmland.
