(Business in Cameroon) - Raw palm oil packaged in one litre and 5 litres containers now sit next to refined palm oils on the shelves of some supermarkets in the Cameroonian capital. This is the result of the temerity showed by the owner of Lemopalm, an agricultural industrial unit operating a palm grove of 60 hectares and producing between 5 and 10 tons of palm oil per month in the Central region of the country.

At the beginning, the owner of the above-mentioned related in the pro-government daily, “they (supermarket owners, Ed.) told me that the product was dirty and would stain their shelves”. And then, one morning, after repeatedly insisting, Martine Bell received a purchase order for 30 cans of 5 litres each from one supermarket.

Since then, the business is booming. Despite prices largely higher than those available on the regular market. Indeed, instead of FCfa 350 per litre to which local consumers are used, one litre of well packaged palm oil in the supermarket is sold at FCfa 1,000.

“Red oil”, as it is commonly called, thus joins on Cameroonian supermarket shelves local products such as cassava sticks, locally referred to as “bobolos”; mitoumba, a type of cassava cake very popular in Bassa country; maize couscous; or taro, which have been rubbing shoulders for several months with imported products on Casino’s shelves.

BRM