By Mary McCann Sanchez | COMAL collaborator
An important ingredient in practicing economic solidarity is dialogue and consultation. Since our last report in March and with the support of individual donors through GlobalGiving, COMAL has progressed in the organization and planning for an additional eco-friendly panela granulada (natural cane sugar) processing plant in central Honduras’s Lake Yojoa area.
During this period, the COMAL technical team and the cooperative of cane producers met to explore properties where the plant could be built, conducted outreach to two local environmental protection organizations, and met with municipal authorities. The cane producers formed part of a COMAL regional consultation on July 3, 2025 to examine more broadly the aspirations of the community. This regional consultation contributes to COMAL’s strategic planning 2026 through 2030 and provided the following vision: increased leadership of youth in the cooperative; youth in leadership roles; direct marketing channels of panela granulada to consumers; and the diversification of subproducts to generate additional income.
COMAL’s marketing staff was busy during this period analyzing market trends and price changes in cane products, ensuring that COMAL producers received the benefits of currently rising prices in the market. This is one of the important functions of COMAL since traditionally intermediaries purchased raw products from growers at very low prices, without informing them of price fluctuations, and thus pocketing what should be the growers’ profit. COMAL is also exploring new packages sizes in COMAL processing plants: 50 lb. sacks rather than the traditional 100 lb. sacks as a health and safety measure.
In addition to continued production in central Honduras and successful sale of panela granulada produced by COMAL’s two other sites (the model for this project), there are two noteworthy achievements for this site in this past quarter: 1) a dedicated staff person for this project who will assist in organizational and legal aspects for the plant construction; 2) a commitment from ESADE university in Spain, who will provide two post-graduate specialists for business and marketing aspects with an eye to an expanded market and greater return to the growers.
The community of growers and the COMAL network thank GlobalGiving and its donors!
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
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