Amru Rice

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   The proposed loan is up to US$8-10 million (50/50 split between IFC and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program - GASFP) to support Amru Rice (Cambodia) Company Ltd. (“Amru or the “Company”) to provide working capital to increase its wet paddy rice sourcing and refinance existing short-term and long-term debt.  Amru is a rice trading company established in 2011. For the last seven years, Amru increased its vertical integration by extending its activities towards rice milling, processing and packaging, beyond its increase of direct paddy sourcing from cooperatives. Its main business includes: (i) rice processing, milling and export: Battambang rice mill (commissioned in 2015 and having a current annual capacity of 40,000 metric tons of paddy) and a reprocessing / packaging plant in Phnom Penh (commissioned in 2011 with an annual capacity of 80,000 metric tons of milled rice). A greenfield rice mill in Kampong Thom with an annual milling capacity of 40,000 MT of paddy has been commissioned in April 2019. Both rice mills and processing plant are fully-automated, and include drying machines and storage system for paddy and milled rice (e.g. ventilated warehouses) and on-site quality control (QC) laboratory; (ii) a rice noodle factory (rice paper/noodle production, Kampong Speu) acquired in 2016 with a capacity of 2 tons/day; (iii) direct paddy sourcing from 48 cooperatives (estimated 8,500 smallholder farmers) in seven provinces across Cambodia for a total area of 19,000 hectares (ha) of rice paddy production. To strengthen its farmer loyalty, AMRU established in 2018 the Cambodian Agriculture Cooperative Corporation (CACC) in partnership with farmer cooperatives and private investors to provide drying, warehousing and trading services in Kampong Thom Province.  Amru main products are high quality Cambodian jasmine, fragrant and organic rice. In 2018, it processed 59,851 tons of rice of which 90% was exported to 70 countries. Total export volume of rice of Amru in 2017 was 45,000 tons. Amru has been increasingly focusing on sales of organic rice which enjoys increasing demand from China, the USA and Europe. The company has been among the top 5 Cambodian rice exporters since 2013 and the largest miller/exporter of organic rice in 2017/2018.