AGRICULTURE

Mountain Hazelnut Venture Private Limited (MHV) was established in 2010 as a greenfield hazelnut project. The project entails the development of a new smallholder based hazelnut industry in Bhutan in order to take advantage of the growing market opportunity for hazelnuts which sees increasing demand from European confectionary and Asian snack producers. The Company supplies raw material (tree plantlets), which it develops at its own nurseries, as well as inputs and support for growing hazelnut trees to local farmers free of charge. Farmers grow and maintain the trees on their own or government leased - fallow - land under the supervision of the Company. Once the trees produce sizeable amounts of hazelnuts, the Company will purchase the crop from the farmers and market the nuts to international purchasers after initial processing. As of Dec 2014, the Company had planted 2.5 million surviving trees planted and registered over 6,000 farmers to participate in the project, which is expected to rise to a total of 10.8 million trees and 15,000 registered farmer households by 2017/18.

Bhutan