South Korea’s Overseas Agro-Resourced Association (AOAA) will conduct a feasibility study on establishing a cashew nut processing factory in Cambodia. The proposal for a feasibility study came during a recent seminar organised by Cambodia’s Ministry of Commerce (MoC) along with AOAA to discuss the ‘Cashew Nut Processing Facility Establishment Project in Cambodia’. Reach Ra, Secretary of State of MoC, who chaired the first day of the two-day seminar, urged the Korean delegation to encourage Korean businessmen to invest in cashew processing in the Kingdom and support the development of the agricultural product. The two countries have also a free trade agreement (FTA) that can further boost cooperation in the sector. Heo Jang, Project Manager, along with his delegation from Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI), representatives of AOAA and Soeun Sothnita, the representative of Cashew Nut Association of Cambodia (CAC) were present at the event held at the office of MoC, in Phnom Penh. Jang noticed that most of Cambodia’s cashews were exported unprocessed leading to loss of earnings from value addition. Therefore, AOAA intends to conduct a feasibility study to set up cashew processing factories through the Official Development Assistance (ODA) of the South Korean government. Uon Silot, President of CAC, told Khmer Times that during a meeting on Friday, they discussed with AOAA the project to build the factory in Cambodia in the near future. Silot said that Cambodia has 31 enterprises running factories to process cashew nuts. However, they can only process around 5-10 percent of the total produce. As such, the government of Cambodia is seeking more companies and investors from Korea to build more processing factories to improve earnings from cashew nuts. Sothnita said that the discussion between the two parties focussed on the development of the cashew sector in Cambodia and it included the cultivation process, marketing, farmers’ well-being and expansion of cashew farms. She indicated that Korean investors are interested in building a factory that can process 7,500 tons of cashew per year. CAC also expects cashew cultivation to increase to 740,000 hectares by the end of the year, with an average yield of 1.8 tons per hectare. The data on Raw Cashew Nuts (RCN) for the first half of the year has not been finalized. Reports from Vietnam, the leading importer of cashews from Cambodia, showed that it bought 574,000 tons of fresh/wet cashew nuts, equal to $785 million, from Cambodia during the first half of 2023. Dry cashew nuts can earn $1,658 per ton. According to a statement by Lee Sang Mu, President of AOAA, it requested the Council for Agriculture and Rural Development of Cambodia (CARD) to support the government in the implementation of the National Policy on Cashew Nuts 2025-2028.