If you watched 7News on Friday night, you saw the embattled leaders
of Citrus Products of Belize Limited, Chairman of the Board Mike Duncker and
CEO Henry Canton defending themselves against charges levied by the leadership
of the Citrus Growers Association.
Along with Ernest Raymond, who is one of the leaders of the new growers’
group - they fiercely held the position that – despite the fact that the
Citrus Growers has a majority shareholding – it was their duty as directors
to make decisions in the best interest of the company not of the majority shareholder.
And that company is growing by leaps and bounds. There have been investments
of $30 million to upgrade and modernize operations to position the Citrus Products
of Belize as a Belizean Company with a truly regional presence. Principally,
there are two processing plants, one feed mill, and a packaging plant. We visited
a few of those facilities on Friday – and here’s what we found.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
The Citrus Products of Belize factory is as modern a facility as you will find
in Belize. It has benefited from a systematic programme of modernization which 
is unrivalled. The process begins here, when trucks come in loaded with oranges.
First they are weighed which is recorded electronically inside and then the
truck advances to an incline and is off loaded.
At the off loading dock it is registered n this electronic scanner. As the
oranges are spat out of the 18 wheeler into hydraulic gates that open up to
a conveyer belt, the oranges then trundle along to an elevator which takes them
up about three storeys and they are shoveled out here. The first sorting area
where these women – and there are only women doing this job – discard
those oranges that are too ripe, too green, or too big.
The rejects have their own conveyor belt to a disposal area while the rest
go along to massive storage bins. Here they are being released from the bins
to enter the production stage where they are taken up along conveyor belts and
shovelled up to this collecting bin – which is at the head end of the
juicing process. It is a process controlled at every stage via computer. That
process occurs in a room that looks completely mechanized and thoroughly modern.
The process beings with a high pressure wash – using water culled from 
the same process. The oranges are sorted one more time for any rejects and then
sorted based on size by machines. And then it’s straight into the machine
where they are reduced to shred in seconds. This is the juice that comes out
while this is the citrus oil. The juice is collected here in what is called
evaporator is feed tank tanks. A five thousand gallon tank that is constantly
being filled with juice from the extraction process and emptied into the dehydrator
– the bottom of which you see here in this maze of tubes. It is 9 tubes
actually that treat the juice with heat to extract all the water – dehydrate
it, so that while it begins with this thin yellow juice – it ends up in
a syrupy thick orange liquid and that is the final product.
When the season is on his factory works around the clock 24 hours a day, 7
days a week - about 8 or 9 months a year. And so does the farmer, who after
he unloads his truck goes back to the weighting station with no load. The difference
between the incoming and outgoing weight is calculated which subtracts the number
of boxes of rejected fruit. The grower then gets a receipt telling him how many
boxers he’ll get paid for.
The farmers and the three to 800 factory workers – depending on the time
of season, put out about 25,000 to 43,000 boxes of product a day. And what is 
not used in the juice making process - the skin, the pulp, the rejects, goes
back from the factory on this augur where the orange skins are stripped of every
drop of water and pulp – which is turned into molasses then mixed back
in with the skin which is reduced to mulch and then put in this massive rotating
oven which converts the waste by product from this into this - pellets which
come out smoking hot and are set for export as cow feed – which is being
prepared for export to Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.
CEO Dr. Henry Canton says it’s just one of many promising efforts to
make this into a highly profitable business.
Dr. Henry Canton, CEO – Citrus Products of Belize Ltd.
“Where before with an orange we only concentrated on the juice and
the oil that came from the rind, right now when that orange comes into us we
look at every aspect of that orange and how we can make it marketable. So we 
can make at the plant, we can do orange juice, turn it into concentrate, freeze
or frozen, we can package it freeze or frozen, we de-pulp frozen, we do all
the oils, we do all the aromas, we do all the essences, we’ve now taken
the peel and we can convert it into cattle field which now brings more value
to something that used to cost us couple million dollars or more to try to dispose
of.”
They used to dispose of it here – a compost site that cost them millions
of dollars to maintain every year for a compost by product that had to be given
away. That they say the feed mill is an improvement that should at least break
even.
Dr. Henry Canton,
“We said that we needed to go after the value added stream in order
to take the spikes out of the commodity market, we needed to have a value added
chain where we could steady the flow and predict a little bit more what the
growers are going to get. So over the last year we have taken on the value added
line which you are going to see shortly and we also decided to do the feed mill
which as I said takes a $2 million loss and converts it into break in. We also 
decided to go into being able to store more of our product onshore.”
Jules Vasquez,
“You’re investing in a feed mill there that will end up costing
more than the compost heap.”
Mike Duncker, Chairman – CPBL
“That is what is said. That is mischief. There is a serious environmental
problem with the waste that used to run off into the river and kill fish and
maybe make people sick in Dangriga Town. This feed mill takes up all that waste
and makes it into something that is useful. It changes a $2 million loss into
something we hope will make money but certainly if it loses money it won’t
lose $2 million.”
Still, the CGA says it is an investment that they as majority shareholders
did not approve of.
Jules Vasquez,
“Those who criticize you say among many other things but they say these
investments are in fact not in the best interest of the growers. They say these
investments are made without the authority of the board. How do you respond
to those criticisms?”
Dr. Henry Canton,
“I will laugh in the first instance because I do have a board. Mr.
Duncker has been my Chairman for three years. Mr. Redmond had been on the board
previously before that. Like Mr. Redmond said on previous shows, I go to the
board. I take all my decisions, my projections, my plans to the board. It is
approved, the budget is approved, and we live within the budget that we get.
For them to say Henry Canton autocratically run CPBL, it is nonsense.”
But what is not nonsense is that Henry Canton – who runs CPBL –
also has a number of private contracts with that company.
Dr. Henry Canton,
“All the things I hear about myself, about my ADS contract, and about
this and about that, all those things have gone to the board, they have gone
through a governance committee, they’ve been viewed, they’ve been
reviewed, they’ve been challenged, I’ve left the room, I am not
a part of those things. But it is taken and it’s twisted.”
Jules Vasquez,
“The criticisms of you are plentiful but the central ones are that you
have created contracts, business arrangements between the CPBL and your own
entities, your own commercial entities, and the characterizations are that they
are less than arm’s length and they in fact cost the CPBL money to do
things more inefficiently so that you can make money off it from your own commercial
interests.”
Dr. Henry Canton,
“Well that is one of the issues that can be quickly responded to.
When I took the job of CEO, Managing Director, I was explicit in saying I have
my business and I am not going to take this job to compromise my business. That
was one of the stipulations. The second stipulation was that I would be a director
of the board because I was not going to take on the challenge, at the time when
a lot of people thought I was crazy to take on the challenge because it seemed
hopeless, and be asked to leave the room and then come back after decisions
are made. That again is part of the contractual arrangements.
ADS since then, had contracts even before that, and those contracts remained
in place. You talk about the dismantling of the machine shop, I can show you
the machine shop, it is back there alive and kicking. The only thing that goes
down to ADS machine shop are the Toyotas things because we are Belize Diesel
service agents in the south.”
Mike Duncker,
“At the last board meeting that we had, we had a very good look at
all the contracts that ADS has with the company. The company itself manages
certain groves and ADS manages some and it was found that the production from
the ADS managed groves was better than the company managed groves and also the
cost was less from the ADS managed groves than the company managed groves. So
what was done that we switched the groves around to try to bring up the other
groves to the ADS ones. There are a lot of things said out there but they are
said for, they have their own agendas. It is very unfortunate.”
Jules Vasquez,
“But there is fiduciary responsibility related to transactions.”
Mike Duncker,
“And therefore it is all declared at the board and that is why it
was given to the governance committee that they could look at it in depth. What
we found was that we were better off, and I think all the records are there
and we can show you at any time.”
Dr. Henry Canton,
“Yes I am a lightening rod, I guess it is because of… Go to
the board. You are talking to my Chairman. Go to the Governance Committee. When
banks come have a session with them and ask them what they think. It is polarized
and they are also taking me on because I am a this and a that and that does
not mean that there end is also correct.”
Jules Vasquez,
“One cannot be sufficiently convinced that there are a sufficient number
of adverse interests on the board to challenge these decisions. Is there sufficient
thorough review or is it a review to say Henry is one a we?”
Mike Duncker,
“Jules when you sit on a board like that and it affects the growers
and it affects banks, if you have a buddy system there is no such thing like
that. You do what is best for the company and if Henry Canton does not measure
up or the company that he is affiliated with does not measure up then they are
going to go.”
And that’s not the end of it...the saga continues. Tomorrow we’ll
have more from Chairman Duncker and CEO Canton defending their management of
the company – and we’ll also have comment from and tough questions
for the leadership of the CGA.
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