An Mpumalanga company has developed and patented a cashew nut shelling machine which, it claims, will give Africa's moribund cashew nut industry a new lease of life.

Agri-Tech Investments chairperson Anthony Berlein, says his company's innovation, developed over the last two years, has resulted in "huge" reductions in cashew nut processing costs.

In Southern Africa, Mozambique was a globally significant producer of cashew nuts, boasting 16 large processing factories at one stage.

Berlein blames the near-demise of the former Portuguese colony's cashew nut processing industry on World Bank pressure on the government to strip it of protection in the form of a significant export surcharge on raw cashew nuts.

The removal of protection was a direct stimulus to exporting the raw nuts to the only significant purchaser – India – where the nuts are shelled by hand, allegedly often by child labour.

Cashew nut shells are extremely hard to crack using conventional methods and hand shelling is the only system which achieves a high percentage of whole-nut recovery, but the cashew nut liquid burns and disfigures the hands of the shellers.

It is estimated that India absorbs 400 000 t of the 450 000 t of raw cashew nuts produced in Africa each year.

Berlein says the World Bank justified its argument for free trade with the claim that liberalisation would ensure a fairer price for Mozambique's peasant producers.

However, the peasants have no organisation of their own and, lacking marketing mechanisms, are at the mercy of the traders.

The price of cashew nuts in Mozambique has actually collapsed as the factories closed.

In fact, the availability of cheap labour in India has enticed many cashew nut-growing countries to export their product in raw form because conventional mechanised shelling methods entail greater costs and are highly inefficient, achieving low crack rates and low whole-kernel recovery.

In Africa, raw cashew nut exporters include Angola, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Tanzania.

Berlein says the running costs of his company's innovation, called the Cashew Master Mk1, are much cheaper than shelling by hand.

This should encourage local processing in the countries which currently export nuts raw, thus doubling the revenue generated from this industry to $400-million.

Berlein says Agri-Tech's lawyers are now working on the registration of the patented process in most cashew nut-growing countries across the globe.

The brains behind Agri-Tech's new processing technology is Berlein's son, Anthony Berlein Jnr, who spent ten years in the cashew nut-growing and processing industry in Mozambique.

The new technology involves the instant freezing of the shells to make them brittle so that they can crack open and separate easily from the kernel.

The oil found in the shells – which can contaminate the kernel when hand shelling and when conventional mechanised and semi- mechanised shelling methods are used – is frozen and, therefore, does not contaminate the kernel.

Berlein states that Agri-Tech's cryogenic system, which runs on liquid nitrogen, can produce a kilogram of cashew nuts at a cheaper cost than an Indian labourer. "After having worked with cashew nuts for ten yeas, in both the processing and marketing sides, it became obvious that the shelling methods had to be improved upon," says Berlein Jnr.

"The large number of workers under one roof was difficult to control, and the lack of hygiene, shrinkage due to theft and absenteeism were some of the problems encountered.

"An investigation of fully-mechanised shelling facilities revealed a myriad of other problems, including a high percentage of non-shelled nuts – which had to be reshelled – a high percentage of broken kernels and contamination of the kernels by the shell oil." Agri-Tech has already sold one Cashew Master Mk1 machine to Coast Cashews, a Kwazulu-Natal company which is owned jointly by the Industrial Development Corporation and Ithala Development Corporation.

"When the Cashew Master was commissioned, it achieved a 95,42% whole-kernel recovery and a crack rate of 93%, giving a cracking efficiency of 89%." Berlein Snr claims that such high performance levels are not obtainable with conventional shelling methods.

He adds that Coastal Cashews – the only cashew nut producer in South Africa – had nearly reached the point of closing shop because the processing technology it was using was not cost-effective, achieving a cracking efficiency of about 20%.